Could and should do better.

POLISH politics & government, 1989-; GOVERNMENT aid; AGRICULTURAL policy; SUBSIDIES; EUROPEAN Union; INTERNATIONAL relations

EUROPEAN Union countries; GERMANY; CENTRAL Europe

The article focuses on the status of Poland with the European Union. Poland is the big cheese of central Europe, accounting for roughly half its population and half its GDP. Some of the warmth has gone out of Polish-German relations. Germany has come to see enlargement more in terms of the headaches it will bring. It will make new demands on the EU budget, and by extension on Germany, the main payer into the budget. It will bring millions of low-wage workers into the EU, half of them Poles, who can price German workers out of jobs even more easily than before. And it will mean more tedious negotiations, more governments to square and more ministers to persuade whenever Germany wants to have its way on a policy question. With Germany less inclined to give a helping hand, Poland will have to work all the harder for what it gets within the EU. So far, Poland's politicians have been offering voters a worryingly short-term view of EU membership, talking as though the success or failure of it should be measured by the net quantities of quick cash Poland can get from the EU budget in farming subsidies and regional development funds. Poland will need to lift its nose from the small print of the budget if it is to shape EU thinking on another issue close to its heart: relations between the enlarged EU and the countries on its eastern flank, including Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus.