The end of divisions

The President of the Senate of the Republic of Poland Bogdan Borusiewicz said EU “adhesion of Poland and of other ex Soviet Bloc countries”, five years since EU enlargement, has led to the “concrete and definitive elimination of Post-War Europe divisions”, while “it triggered the gradual elimination of all its trails”. During his official visit to Italy President Borusiewicz – who is one of the founders of Solidarnos’c’ and one of the promoters of the “August strike” at Danzica’s shipyard in 1980 – held a lecture on “The end of divided Europe” during a meeting promoted in Milan by the High School of Economy and International Relations of the ‘Cattolica’ University. According to the promoters of the meeting, Borusiewicz’ words contribute to the reinforcement of a new concept of Europe founded on integration and on the consolidation of economic, political and institutional bonds with new Member States, rather than on the fragmentation and division between the Eastern and Western blocs”. The meeting follows the publication in Brussels, a few days ago, of the report “Five years of enlarged Europe”, regarding the benefits conveyed to both sides of the enlargement process in terms of democracy, peace, stability, economic growth and cultural enrichment.The “Year of Democracy”. “Precisely twenty years ago, Poland returned to be one of the democratic countries – Borusiewicz pointed out -. The changes we made contributed to the elimination of the profound divisions that our Continent witnessed for almost fifty years, since the end of the Second World War”. “For a large number of Polish people, including myself, the struggle to change Poland’s social order entailed many years of clandestine opposition”. In fact, even though we recovered “sovereignty, civil rights and freedom” only twenty years ago, the Polish people always viewed these as “fundamental values”. The Senate of the Polish Republic recently proclaimed the year 1989 as “The Year of Democracy”, and in fact in Poland, Borusiewicz explained retracing the events of the past decades, “the Senate is identified with State independence and full citizenship rights”.Common aspiration to freedom. Established through royal decree in 1493, the Senate “performed its functions only until 1794, the year of the defeat of Tadeusz Kosciuszko’s insurrection”. In 1795 the Country – that was divided between Russia, Austria and Prussia – “disappeared from the maps for 123 years”. While independence, “recovered after the First War, lasted only until the Second”, the speaker remarked. The Yalta Agreements of 1945 “subjected Poland to the Soviet Union for a long number of years”. During those years, marked by “the abolition of the Polish Senate” on the part of the authorities, a “large amount of the population who opposed the regime” managed to resort to “the treasure of experiences of the past generations”, thus “succeeding in preserving the national spirit, despite the forced Russification and Germanization that the Country underwent”. This enabled them to counter “Nazi Germany’s attempts at annihilating the entire country, and Stalinist retaliations”. After the 1950s and 1960s, marked by protests and riots “that were often crushed in blood”, “anti-regime activities incessantly gnawed the system’s very foundations”. According to president Borusiewicz, 1980 marked the watershed: “the so-called ‘August Agreement’ was signed on August 31, at the end of a long-lasting strike, broken out with a “popular uprising” in Gdansk’s shipyard. Since then, he declared, “we realized that this part of Europe needed to be involved in the ongoing transformation. It was necessary to support the yearning for freedom of various populations of the Soviet Union such as the Czech, the Slovakians and the Hungarians”.“Yes” to further enlargement. Today, twenty years since the first free elections, and five years after EU adhesion, Poland “is part of a system that guarantees security and enables us to fulfill our aspirations also in erecting the architecture of European institutions. We are in favor of further EU enlargement” Borusiewicz declared. ‘We thereby exhort our European partners to support the freedom and independence claims of our Continent’s populations”. “On the basis of past experience – the speaker concluded – we shall continue reiterating the need to prevent the emergence of further divisions. In compliance with Europe’s outstanding principle of solidarity”.