Posted on 03/21/2005 11:14:58 AM PST by Lukasz
WARSAW, Poland -- The man widely expected to become Poland's next prime minister has issued a stinging rebuke to France and Germany over European policy.
Jan Maria Rokita, a senior official in Poland's center-right Civic Platform party, was quoted by the PAP news agency Monday as saying it was a "scandal" European Commission plans to liberalize services were being blocked.
France and Germany have raised objections to the plans because they fear their economies will lose out to competition from lower cost countries such as Poland and the other new members of the European Union from the former communist world.
"If we don't manage to create a coalition to fight against this social protectionism, then there might be an impression that the entire EU will rather contract than develop," Rokita was quoted as saying.
Rokita is expected to become Poland's next prime minister in elections that could take place in June. Polls indicate the Civic Platform will win the elections by a wide margin.
That's my candidate.
Anyone who slaps down the old men of Old Europe is okay by me.
If they want block such initiatives, Poland should block all socialist initiatives. Well, generally Poland should block all socialist initiatives :-)
I'm not losing any sleep over this issue, partner.
I have no doubt the eastern Europeans are going to give the old men in Paris, Brussels, and Berlin some banana-peels, on which they will slip and fall.
It's going to be as if watching a good comedy on television--although running for a few years, rather than half an hour--the uptight old men getting collywobbled by the younger upstarts, who have "right" on their side.
It seems Poles are operating on the false assumption that they are considered European. 'European' in the context of 'European Union' means the French and Germans and those who willinly become their vassal states.
You got that right, sir.
As an American insulated and isolated from Europe (although I have been there, and lived there, several times), I have the distinct impression "European" is how the French and the Germans define it.
And it seems the way they define the word, it does not apply to anyone east of the Oder, and south of the Alps and Pyrennes.....and not quite including the British (who are, thank God, a different instance anyway).
If France and Germany disappeared, would anyone really care? I can't think why or how.
At least the Poles have their whacking sticks out. I don't envy their position.
He's my candidate too, seriously.
Hmm... Now where did that jb6 go to?
Maybe this will make him happy.
Unfortunately no one invented medicament for stupidity yet.
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