Poland's Uncertain Future:
Politicized Religion and European Integration

Piotr H. Kosicki

On October 9, 2002, Günter Verheugen, the Commissioner for Expansion of the European Union, announced that Poland-along with the nine other countries of the so-called Laeken-10 group-had been officially selected to join the European Union in 2004. After a decade of reforms designed to keep pace with the other Laeken-10 nations, the only barrier between Poland and EU membership was recently eliminated in a domestic referendum held on June 8, 2003, in which a majority of Polish citizens voted to join the EU.

Yet, the debate over whether Poland should join the European Union is far from over; significant moral and cultural concerns remain. Polish national identity has historically been intertwined with Catholicism, and, as a result, the sociopolitics of religion continue to shape decision-making. Wide acceptance of the Church's place as defender of both religious and national identities has generated cleavages between the plethora of actors who define Polish Catholicism. Faced with potentially contradictory allegiances to the institutional Catholic Church, the media, political parties, and the Pope, Polish Catholics often lose sight of where religious authority ends and civil government begins.

These moral-religious concerns demand serious consideration. Even within current EU member states, skeptics argue that the emergence of a Leviathan superstate has spurred moral decay. Both supporters and critics of Poland's accession to the EU fear that membership might dilute the values traditionally associated with the national and religious identities of Polish society…

Piortr H. Kosicki is a President's Scholar in the Program for International Relations and the Department of history, Stanford University.