(Partial) Victory!

[Rictor]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6222992.stm


Germany has proposed to EU states that they should agree to drop the idea of a constitution when they meet at a summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

The "constitutional concept... is abandoned", says a paper circulated by Germany, which will chair the summit.

Hopefully this will slow the advance of bureaucratic nanny-statism in Europe, although I wouldn't count on it in the longer term.

[Kitsune]

For the likes of you this should be a great weekend. As it looks now, the Polish government is going to block any agreement about an EU basic treaty because they disagree with the voting system. That should bury the whole EU constitution/basic law story once and for all and plunge the Union into the next crisis. You can already prepare the champaigne, I think.

[Switek]

Ahhh... Damn Poles...
;)


http://debatte.welt.de/kommentare/25275/es+sind+die+polen+die+europa+retten

[joka]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6222992.stm



Hopefully this will slow the advance of bureaucratic nanny-statism in Europe, although I wouldn't count on it in the longer term.
What this simply means is that instead of replacing all the existing treaties with one coherent treaty under one book we now have to ammend all the existing one's and up with a more complex structure while still having the same main charasteristics of the constitutional treaty, thus, more bureaucracy, less transparency and we're still going to have to settle all this at some point in the future.

I think it's time for a "two-speed Europe". Those that want to paint this "bureaucratic nanny-state" boogeyman on the wall can opt to stay out while those ready can move on.

[Kitsune]

@Switek:

I completely disagree with this article. The Polish demands of a "square root" based voting system are simply injust. Poland has 38 million inhabitants while Germany has 82 million, but according to their ideas they want to have 6 votes and grant Germany 9. As it is, voting rights in the EU are already far from being proportional in relation to the population but this goes simply too far. Just ask yourself this: if the population situation would be reversed and Merkel would bring this idea up, what do you think would the Kaczynski twins say? Wouldn't they ask back wether Merkel has **** for brains to make such a demand?

À propos **** for brains...is it really true that the newest idea of Jaroslaw Kaczynski is to take the dead the of Poland in WWII into account as far as the number of votes for Poland is concerned? Or is this some absurd misunderstanding?

[Switek]

I completely disagree with this article. The Polish demands of a "square root" based voting system are simply injust. Poland has 38 million inhabitants while Germany has 82 million, but according to their ideas they want to have 6 votes and grant Germany 9. As it is, voting rights in the EU are already far from being proportional in relation to the population but this goes simply too far. Just ask yourself this: if the population situation would be reversed and Merkel would bring this idea up, what do you think would the Kaczynski twins say? Wouldn't they ask back wether Merkel has **** for brains to make such a demand?

Too much "if". I underestand your point couse you're German



À propos **** for brains...is it true that the newest idea of Jaroslaw Kaczynski is to take the dead the of Poland in WWII into account as far as the number of votes for Poland is concerned? Or is this some absurd misunderstanding?

In EU summit Poland is represent by president Lech Kaczyński an obvious baby eater :|

couse I'm decent here are arguments of Jarosław Kaczyński:


Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland’s prime minister, said a proposed new EU voting formula based on population size hurt his country because it had not recovered from its losses following the German invasion of September 1939.

“We are only demanding one thing, that we get back what was taken from us,” Mr Kaczynski said in an interview with Polish national radio. “If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would be today looking at the demographics of a country of 66m.”

[Musashi]

I completely disagree with this article. The Polish demands of a "square root" based voting system are simply injust. Poland has 38 million inhabitants while Germany has 82 million, but according to their ideas they want to have 6 votes and grant Germany 9.
Yes, it is injust, but: could you tell me why your Government is not going to keep up the Treaty of Nice, that it had signed a few years ago? Why was such a system (much more favourable for Poland, than the current Polish proposal) good then and why is it bad now? How many the fvck treaties is Germany going to break? In return should we renegotiate other treaties with Germany, that are not good enough for Poland or should we behave like civilized people are supposed to behave?

The clever German, who wrote the article in die Welt started looking in the future and came to the conclusion, that Turkey, that WILL be the most populated EU country in the future, will play the key role in voting p-)
And don't think, it is a bad news for Poland - I am sure we will make excellent deals with Turkey woot


À propos **** for brains...is it really true that the newest idea of Jaroslaw Kaczynski is to take the dead the of Poland in WWII into account as far as the number of votes for Poland is concerned? Or is this some absurd misunderstanding?
Where did you find it? Do you have an article about it? :roll:
I'd rather propose to exclude from voting the enourmous population in some EU countries, that was not even born in Europe p-)

MfG,
Chris

[Mishka Zubov]

First, the disclaimer: I am just an external observer.

Now, two interesting sources:
Poland’s fight on voting rules matters for EU budget allocations
Richard Baldwin
18 June 2007


There is a clear positive relationship between an EU member’s power per person in the Council of Ministers and its receipts per person from the EU budget. If voting rules have such a clear effect on an easily measurable outcome like budget allocations, it is likely that votes matter for other more important issues.

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/279

This demonstrates how voting system translates into economic benefits. It also suggests that this is a serious matter and is worthy to fight for. Cold-headed economists should understand it; they should start working on their economical models and mathematical computations, rather than continue getting emotionally involved in ridiculing Poland.

Polish mathematicians in Brussels
According to Dziennik, a team of 50 Polish mathematicians is part of the support team of the Polish delegation.
http://www.dziennik.pl/Default.aspx?TabId=14&ShowArticleId=49582

Anyone sees a relation between those two pieces of information?

[PolishKhalsa]

@Switek:

I completely disagree with this article. The Polish demands of a "square root" based voting system are simply injust.


Just or unjust appropriate or not is something that needs to be debated and negociated.

[perdurabo]

there was a good diagram showing power of votes for big countries and small ones, for nice syste, polish and constitutional one, in "constitutional" voting system small countries would have 3 times less power they have now in Polish system proposal Germany has more power of vote than in niece but small countries has almoust same position as they have now, and Poland would have actually smaller voting power than in constitutional or niece! i dislike our goverment but they have right now.

[muck]

The treaty shouldn't become valid since the population of two EU-member states rejected it, but not because of the fanciful argumentation of the Kaczyński-Brothers.
Either, every country should only have one vote like common in the United Nations committees or elsewhere, or every member should have a number of votes in accordance of it's size, it's population, it's economical power and last but not least, it's contribution to the EU budget (!).
Not because I am a German I think it would completely be unjust if a country of Polands size had only three votes less than Germany. Additionally, the suspicion arises that the veto is purely motivated by an Anti-German way of thinking since Kaczyński never mentioned other major EU-nations next to Germanys size like France or the UK.
Apart from being totally ridiculous, the proposal to count in the would-be-size of Poland's population is very formenting, too. The European Union should be based on the intention to fill up the old trenches and not to dig out new ones. The Germans of today haven't caused WW2 and the Poles of today had not to defeat their homeland against us back in 1939.
Otherwise, we also could raise objections with the very plausible and scientific proven argument, that, if not approximately 5.5 million Germans had died in WW2, we would have population of 95+ million today, what would bring us even more votes...

[PolishKhalsa]

Actually the math sez the 'square root' voting system is just.


Multiple answers to Europe's maths problem
By Wolfgang Munchau

Published: June 18 2007 03:00 | Last updated: June 18 2007 03:00

What is a fair voting system for the European Union? It looks as though, thanks to Poland, European leaders will be forced to debate this difficult question at their summit this week.

Since the simplified draft treaty is substantively identical to the old and rejected constitution - minus some cosmetics - the voting system proposed is going to be the same one: passage of legislation requires a coalition of countries representing at least 55 per cent of the member states and 65 per cent of the population. The Poles have threatened a veto unless the second of those two numbers is based on the square root of the population size - to reduce Germany's influence. It sounds arbitrary, but the Poles have a point. Mathematics is on the side of Poland.

To an uninitiated observer, this does not appear immediately obvious. Does it not seem fair that the voting power of a country in an international organisation should be proportional to its population size? The answer is no. In fact, it is totally unfair. The reason is that effective voting power in multi-nation settings such as the EU depends not on voting size but on the ability to form winning coalitions. Large countries are better placed than their relative population size would suggest.

The original, six-member Community is a good example of this counter-intuitive idea. Germany, France and Italy each had four votes in the council of ministers, the Netherlands and Belgium had two and Luxembourg one vote. Germany then had more than 100 times the population of Luxembourg, yet only four times the number of votes.

Intuition might suggest that tiny Luxembourg was surely over-represented. In truth, the opposite was the case. The threshold for a majority was set at 12 votes. Since every member except Luxembourg had an even number of votes, Luxembourg was never in a position to cast a make-or-break vote. Despite being numerically over-represented, Luxembourg in effect had zero voting power. That would have been different if, for example, an odd number had been chosen as the threshold.

So how do you measure effective voting power? Lionel Penrose, the British mathematician and psychiatrist who developed a theory of voting power in the 1940s, concluded that votes in international organisations should be based on the square root of the population. This is where the Poles got their idea. In the 1960s, John Banzhaf, a US attorney, established an index to measure a country's voting power. There are two versions of the Banzhaf index. The absolute Banzhaf index measures the ability of a country to cast the decisive vote in a winning coalition as a proportion of all coalitions in which that country takes part. In the case of the pre-1973 EU, the absolute Banzhaf index for Luxembourg was precisely zero. For Germany it was 24 per cent. Germany, not Luxembourg, was over-represented.

What about the EU today? With 27 members, there are a total of 133m possible coalitions. The economists Richard Baldwin and Mika Widgrén have calculated the Banzhaf indices for each member state, both under the current regime, established by the treaty of Nice and in force since 2004, and the constitution*. The results clearly support the Polish case. Germany's absolute Banzhaf index shoots up from about 5 per cent to more than 15 per cent (it would have gone up to 30 per cent under the original draft). The trouble is that everyone's absolute Banzhaf index also goes up, including Poland's. How could that be?

The reason is that the constitution dramatically improves the probability of legislation being passed. Mathematically, the passage probability can be defined as the ratio of "winning" coalitions to all coalitions. In the 15-member EU, this ratio was 8 per cent (this means that 8 per cent of all possible coalitions produce a Yes vote). Under the Nice rules it has fallen to 3 per cent and will approach zero as the EU expands further. This is why the present voting system needs to be fixed.

The constitutional treaty raises this ratio to 13 per cent. But as the overall passage probability rises, so does a country's ability to cast a pivotal vote. This explains why the absolute Banzhaf index rises for everybody, including Poland. The Polish problem is that Germany's influence would be enormous in relative terms.

Is Poland's square root solution the only alternative? Of course not. EU leaders could, for example, raise the threshold for population size and number of countries from their 55 and 65 per cent respectively or introduce some complicated new formula - perhaps with a square root in it. There is a quite a bit a leeway left without creating Nice-style gridlock. Professors Baldwin and Widgrén propose another simple and effective solution: drop the voting rules of

the constitution and just repair the Nice rules by reducing some of the high thresholds.

The Poles have put their finger on an important issue, though their own answer is not as compelling as they think. If and when EU leaders set out to amend the rules, they should heed the lessons of the past. Any new system needs to fulfil two parallel goals: it needs to make the voting system more effective and it needs to be fair. The Nice system is fair and ineffective. The constitution is effective but unfair.

If they get this wrong again, they will be back at the negotiating table not too long from now. But if they get it right, they will have managed to create the one and only substantive change from the original treaty.

*www.cepr.org/pubs/PolicyInsights/

PolicyInsight3.pdf

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/422078ce-1d38-11dc-9b58-000b5df10621.html

[muck]

The clever German, who wrote the article in die Welt started looking in the future and came to the conclusion, that Turkey, that WILL be the most populated EU country in the future

How could that happen? At first, it's not sure yet - heaven forbid - that Turkey will become a member, and even if, then we still would have a higher population p-)

[Musashi]

Otherwise, we also could raise objections with the very plausible and scientific proven argument, that, if not approximately 5.5 million Germans had died in WW2, we would have population of 95+ million today, what would bring us even more votes...
But you see, we are not guilty for your losses (don't start a world war again) and you are guilty for our ones. That's the main difference and the most polite way to point it out.

Actually the math sez the 'square root' voting system is just.
Look at his name. Apparently we have another reasonable German on our side p-) :hug: And Financial Times is a serious newspaper, not a kind of tabloid.

[Musashi]

How could that happen? At first, it's not sure yet - heaven forbid - that Turkey will become a member, and even if, then we still would have a higher population p-)
Oh, Muck come on, why should I be so precise and you did not guess I meant the demographics of Germany and Turkey? :roll: Who will have a bigger population in the future?

MfG,
Chris

[Kitsune]

But you see, we are not guilty for your losses (don't start a world war again) and you are guilty for our ones. That's the main difference and the most polite way to point it out.

This is this nice guilt dodging and at the same time accusing stance that has become so typical. WW2's origins are a bit more complex as is the matter of guilt. Germany could have been treated fairer after WWI. Poland could have behaved better after the Great War (instead of declaring itself a victorious power and all that). It could have agreed to Hitler's suggestions about solving the Danzig and Corridor problems (it may be forgotten, but Poland and Nazi Germany actually got along quite well until spring 1939, having signed a non-aggression pact in 1934, one year after Hitler had come to power, interestingly Poland and the very democratic Weimarian Republic never got along well). And it was not Germany alone that attacked Poland, but the Sovietunion, too. Polands losses would have been far less terrible if the war had not lenghtened and escalated and it did that because France and Britain declared war on Germany. And after the war between 1.1 and 3 million Germans were killed, needlessly as I must add, in the former German eastern territories, atleast half that number by Poles. Do those people also not count?

Its more than that. About half of those six million Poles killed during WWII were Jews. And Poland had been a quite antisemtic country (between 1933 and 1938, 170.000 Jews fled from Nazi Germany to Western countries, but more than 500.000 fled from Eastern Europe to Nazi-Germany - many of those from Poland). Do you know how some Israelis think about the Poles of that time? Can Jaroslaw K. today really presume to command the votes of those dead Jewish people? Wouldn't they, assuming they hadn't been murdered in the Holocaust, not rather be in Israel today?

Of course, the whole idea is ridiculous beyond words. How would you explain to a state like Spain which has about as many inhabitants as Poland that the latter gets more votes because in their case dead Poles and virtual ones (those who possibly would have been born) get also represented? And what if this idea spreads? "We want only back what was taken from us!" What if the Indians in America use the same approach? How many millions of them, in both of the Americas, were killed by the Whites and through diseases which came with them? Shouldn't the spirits of those dead not also be allowed to vote? Perhaps the Indians even demand that all of America is returned to them and that the honkeys should go back to Europe where they came from.

Sorry, no. I must say, this is the most absurdely blatant (or perhaps blatantly absurd) case of playing the N-card I have ever seen. Even the Israelis have never done anything that comes close to this. And that is the most polite way I can put it.







P.S.: One last question. If we should agree that Poland is treated as a country with 66 million inhabitants...do you still insist that the square root voting method is applied in that case? ;-)

[muck]

Maybe I wrong now our East European friends, but I totally disagree with your comment, Musashi.


But you see, we are not guilty for your losses (don't start a world war again) and you are guilty for our ones. That's the main difference and the most polite way to point it out.

In the same way you could blame the Russians what also explains the current aversion the Polish policy has against Russia. Of course you did not cause our losses, but neither did we Germans who live today. I feel sorry for what my forefathers did to Poland and the rest of Europe, but I honestly don't see a reason why the modern Germans should have to clear that debt.


Oh, Muck come on, why should I be so precise and you did not guess I meant the demographics of Germany and Turkey? Who will have a bigger population in the future?

If Kaczynski would really want a longsighted reaction to the possible EU entry of Turkey, likewise rich in population, or the Ukraine, I think he would have clearly pointed this out since he apparently don't see any need for stoppages in international diplomacy. My personal point of view is, that nationalism in Poland is quite high-priced at the moment and that is the only reason for his proposal. That mentality is quite understandable. The Polish people rightly asks themselves, why they should subordinate their wishes now after decades of Communism and the era of Nazi-ruling before.
But: The EU is based at the deep wish of nations to fill up the old trenches of the world war and not to dig out new ones. In Berlin, where our politicians are permanently anxious about the sensitivities of other states, this way of thinking is omnipresent, but in Warsaw it apparently has sunk into oblivion a bit.
When the Montan union and the treaty of Rome merged into the European Community, the thoughts were dominated by the wish of the unity and the peace of the European people, and by common ideals and common cultural goods.
But sometimes one could have thought, with the east expansion, Brussels has betrayed these ideals for a few million square kilometres more on the map. This is not meant in a racist way or as an offence, but: Many people in Western Europe have grown up with the idea of Europe, how should a farmer in Eastern Europe, who grew up under the rule the communism and for whom we had been the worst enemies only twenty years ago - at least from political view- understand these thoughts totally if they are completely new to him? Maybe this comment was a bit to harsh, I know only a few people from Eastern Europe. Their attitude towards the EU is quite positive, but they also admitted when we debated about the Union, that their thoughts are not shared by many in the older groups of the population. So, simply according to the statements of some Polish or Czech politicians, one would have to assume that the EU can hardly offer anything more interesting than agricultural subsidies. If this trend continues, a Europe of two speeds will arise, namely the original EU and the rest that does what it wants and constantly does flirt with the Americans.

[Macs.]

I am not going to bother talking about Kaczynski's proporsal, but let me say this:

If Germany didn't have to suffer from so many stolen cars our economy would be waaaaay better, and that's why we should demand 45.000.000.000.000 Euros from the Polish goverment. p-)

[a_very_ex_STAB]

For the likes of you this should be a great weekend. As it looks now, the Polish government is going to block any agreement about an EU basic treaty because they disagree with the voting system. That should bury the whole EU constitution/basic law story once and for all and plunge the Union into the next crisis. You can already prepare the champaigne, I think.

Hurrah!!!!:)
The sooner the whole crumbling edifice collapses under the weight of its own contradictions the better.:)

[tluassa]

I am not going to bother talking about Kaczynski's proporsal, but let me say this:

If Germany didn't have to suffer from so many stolen cars our economy would be waaaaay better, and that's why we should demand 45.000.000.000.000 Euros from the Polish goverment. p-)


Germany should propose a system that is based on a mixture of economic performance and population size, that would put us on the Top before all others. After that, we would come down to the current German proposal after sorting things out with the Poles.

[perdurabo]

I am not going to bother talking about Kaczynski's proporsal, but let me say this:

If Germany didn't have to suffer from so many stolen cars our economy would be waaaaay better, and that's why we should demand 45.000.000.000.000 Euros from the Polish goverment. p-)
an you should check again who stoles moust of your cars :bash:

[muck]

Germans, to pocket the insurance? Come on, his comment was obviously meant in a sarcastic way.

[[WDW]Megaraptor]

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland’s prime minister, said a proposed new EU voting formula based on population size hurt his country because it had not recovered from its losses following the German invasion of September 1939.

“We are only demanding one thing, that we get back what was taken from us,” Mr Kaczynski said in an interview with Polish national radio. “If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would be today looking at the demographics of a country of 66m.”
What the heck...does he want to calculate what Germany's population would be if they hadn't lived through WW2???

Or France's if they hadn't live through WW1?

[Musashi]

Germany could have been treated fairer after WWI. Poland could have behaved better after the Great War (instead of declaring itself a victorious power and all that).
Did we demand anything more, that you stole us in 1772-1795?

It could have agreed to Hitler's suggestions about solving the Danzig and Corridor problems
Despite I disagree with some of your posts, I consider you a clever guy. Do you really think it would have been the last Adi's demand? Is saying "give somebody a finger and he'll demand entire hand" known just in Poland?
Do you consider us idiots? We knew what had happened to Czechoslovakia. First, it was just one demand, that caused Czechoslovakia became defenceless, losing fortified areas alongside its border and lost its independence as a consequence when Adi demanded more.

Polands losses would have been far less terrible if the war had not lenghtened and escalated and it did that because France and Britain declared war on Germany.
Is your familiarity with history reduced to the familiarity with tanks (what is damn good)? p-) It's another time I've noticed (after your claim, there were 15 million Poles living in Germany before WWI), some your statements are so "original", as we lived on different planets :roll::petting:
Don't you know Adi planned to kill at least 30% of Poles and turn the rest into slaves? So what has it to do with the ongoing war? He was doing, what he had intended to do. Concentration camps were not only for Jews, the first foreign prisoners in them were Poles. More time required to liberate them = more time for exterminating them. It's a pure logic. Your IQ don't have to be 200 to understand it :petting:

And after the war between 1.1 and 3 million Germans were killed, needlessly as I must add, in the former German eastern territories, atleast half that number by Poles.
How many of them were killed by the Poles intentionally and how many of them died because of lack of food, a very difficult evacuation, were killed by the Red Army, etc.?
You should know we could have killed all of them, if we had really intended to do it, because Germany was a defenceless country just after the war. So do you claim we were conducting a planned extermination in that period? :roll:
So how is it possible at least 20-25% of inhabitants of my town very close to the German border has German roots? p-)

And Poland had been a quite antisemtic country (between 1933 and 1938, 170.000 Jews fled from Nazi Germany to Western countries, but more than 500.000 fled from Eastern Europe to Nazi-Germany - many of those from Poland).
Therefore out of 21,758 Righteous Amongst the Nations 6004 are Poles?
http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous/index_righteous.html (click statistics).
Nice StAtZ, does not?

Can Jaroslaw K. today really presume to command the votes of those dead Jewish people? Wouldn't they, assuming they hadn't been murdered in the Holocaust, not rather be in Israel today?
Our Little Great Leader has a lot of hidden POWER. I'd rather not neglected him.
About the Jews in Poland...
Most of them were rich people or very rich ones. Do you think it would be a good idea to move to Israel and start from nothing if you have a factory in Poland? Some of them would have moved to Israel, but the majority would have stayed in Poland, for sure.

Even the Israelis have never done anything that comes close to this.
Because your press does not make jokes of Israelis and takes their country as a serious one. I don't even imagine German press writing such a BS about Israelis as it writes about Poles. You have some kind of political correctness towards SOME nations, that you harmed.

One last question. If we should agree that Poland is treated as a country with 66 million inhabitants...do you still insist that the square root voting method is applied in that case?
I'd guess we would do something to meet your demands, if you did something to meet our ones. That's called a compromise.

For the likes of you this should be a great weekend. As it looks now, the Polish government is going to block any agreement about an EU basic treaty because they disagree with the voting system. That should bury the whole EU constitution/basic law story once and for all and plunge the Union into the next crisis. You can already prepare the champaigne, I think.
Maybe you don't know it, Poles approve the EU as an institution the most amongst all the EU members.
Why are we blamed for everything, as the EU constitution has been already rejected in France and Holland? Don't you see double standards here? Why do you behave as if everything was so fine if not these evil and stubborn Poles? :roll:


Maybe I wrong now our East European friends, but I totally disagree with your comment, Musashi.
It's not forbidden by the rules of MP.net to disagree with me p-)
You are still cultural and I don't have anything against you.

[Sergei]

It shouldn't surprise the Germans that Poland is playing its "WWII occupation" card.
For the last 15 years it successfully played the "soviet occupation" card until it bored everybody to death.

[perdurabo]

It shouldn't surprise the Germans that Poland is playing its "WWII occupation" card.
For the last 15 years it successfully played the "soviet occupation" card until it bored everybody to death.
oh our dear Specnaz in Kiev railway station friend is here, hello buddy how are you? still hating Poles?

[JDZ]

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland’s prime minister, said a proposed new EU voting formula based on population size hurt his country because it had not recovered from its losses following the German invasion of September 1939.

“We are only demanding one thing, that we get back what was taken from us,” Mr Kaczynski said in an interview with Polish national radio. “If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would be today looking at the demographics of a country of 66m.”



Megaraptor;2584406']What the heck...does he want to calculate what Germany's population would be if they hadn't lived through WW2???

Or France's if they hadn't live through WW1?

LOL! I know some movies dealing with that:
Dawn of the dead and
dead man voting!

[Kitsune]

Maybe you don't know it, Poles approve the EU as an institution the most amongst all the EU members.
Why are we blamed for everything, as the EU constitution has been already rejected in France and Holland? Don't you see double standards here? Why do you behave as if everything was so fine if not these evil and stubborn Poles?
Because, as we see it, your present government is very anti-european, very aggressive and very annoying. I have read that, according to polls, the Polish people would be among the most approving as far as the EU is concerned, that's why I myself used the phrasing "the Polish government" instead of "the Poles".


As far as your other question is concerned, in its section "voices of the press", the German newspaper "Bonner Generalanzeiger" quoted today the French "Les Progres de Lyon" like follows (my translation):

"Vive la Pologne! If they weren't already in the EU, one would have had to invite them to the summit in Brussels. Because the Poles, with the brothers Kaczynski, guarantee the spectacle. Poland is for us (the French) absolutely necessary because it is so similiar to us. It gobbles up huge amount of agrar subsidiaries, is envious of the German potency and very sensitive about national pride. Newly in the club, Poland just goes too far in its behaviour, it lacks the diplomatic qualities of our foreign ministry. Next to Poland, France looks moderate, rational and cooperative, in one word: European. And so all the world forgets that Europe is in the present mess because France said 'No' to the EU constitution."

[Switek]

Because, as we see it, your present government is very anti-european, very aggressive and very annoying. I have read that, according to polls, the Polish people would be among the most approving as far as the EU is concerned, that's why I myself used the phrasing "the Polish government" instead of "the Poles".


Polish, present government is very aggressive and very annoying. True. But it isn't anti-european.