The European Commission took a first step to discipline Poland’s new ruling party for seizing heightened control over the state, fueling a debate about whether eastern Europe is slipping back into its authoritarian past.

Risking a nationalist backlash from Warsaw, the commission said it will assess whether the Law & Justice party went too far in ramming through laws that politicize the constitutional court and national broadcaster after returning to power in October.

“Our aim is to solve these issues, our aim is not to accuse, to go into a polemic,” Frans Timmermans, commission vice president, told reporters on Wednesday in Brussels after Poland became the first country to face an assessment under the EU law.

While the commission opened only a “preliminary” dialogue on a future disciplinary procedure, that distinction may be lost on Polish leaders who have bashed the European Union’s Brussels institutions and reopened historic wounds with Germany.

David Fuller's view

If the EU had a successful economic track record since the single currency was launched on 1^st January 1999, and if it was robustly democratic and increasingly popular with citizens of the Eurozone, then Poland might follow its dictates.

Unfortunately, the EU has clearly become weaker against most other developed regions since 1999, and perhaps more importantly, relative to the combined GDP growth rates of EU countries, on average, in the two decades before the Euro was introduced.  Moreover, the Eurozone has become less democratic as the unelected European Commission has become more powerful, compromising responsibility among the democratically elected national governments within the region.  No wonder the EU is less popular today with Eurozone citizens, some of whom now back parties that are in open opposition to EU policies.

Against this background, Poland’s government joined the EU to have a further buffer against interference from totalitarian Russia.  However, it is not about to abandon the Polish Zloty for the Euro.  After all, why should it now that Poland’s economy is currently outperforming the EU in terms of GDP growth, albeit from an understandably lower base following decades of suppression in the former Soviet Union. 

  I do not see how the EU can recover from its problems of the last sixteen years in its current form, let alone achieve its federal ambitions which have little public support.