British scepticism has been an irritant to more integrationist tendencies,but also a healthy correctiveThere are no easy choices for European leaders in dismay at the Polish government’s turn absent from liberal democracy. to disregard the ruling Law and Justice party’s incursions on judicial independence, signed into effect by President Andrzej Duda on Wednesday, or would be to tolerate sabotage of fundamental treaty principles that member states signed up to when joining the bloc. But the sight of western states – above all Germany – berating Poland risks stoking a nationalist backlash that is cultivated by Law and Justice to advance their goal of monopolising power.
Amid this tricky transcontinental row,Theresa May flew to Warsaw with senior cabinet ministers, seeking to develop a strategic alliance with Poland ahead of the moment phase of Brexit talks. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki obligingly signalled that Poland would back the UK on a bespoke deal, and including services. Mrs May offered a security partnership with a country anxious about an ever more assertive Russia. This bilateral bargain is complicated by the European commission’s deep suspicion of UK efforts to negotiate behind its back. It fears that Londons divide-and-rule strategy will work better in the moment phase of Brexit talks than in the first,when it hit a wall of pan-EU solidarity. The Tories have made common cause with Law and Justice before. Many European leaders wanted Mrs May to signal her goodwill to them by transmitting in Warsaw their view that Poland has crossed a line. Instead, she described constitutional issues as “primarily a matter for the country concerned, and not the EU”.
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Source: guardian.co.uk