10: Poland

From the BBC:
"Ten years on - how do Poles feel about EU?"

In Warsaw there was a bit of a May Day party in a park next to an ornamental lake: the president planting a tree, concerts and marching bands, and families sitting on the grass having picnics.

May 1 was 10 years to the day since Poland joined the EU - along with seven other former communist countries from Central and Eastern Europe.  Big Bang enlargement they called it. And for many observers it's been one of the biggest success stories in the EU's history - bringing the division between East and West in Europe to an end. Sure, there have been some economic struggles, and some difficult transitions. Institutions in Brussels, including the European Parliament, can seem as remote as ever.  But much of Eastern Europe is unrecognisable from the region that became part of the EU a decade ago.  It's not all down to EU membership, but there's no question that it has helped.

"I think (we) used this time correctly because it was not always an easy time," argues former President Alexander Kwasniewski, who was at the helm when Poland joined. "There was the financial crisis," he adds, "and now Ukraine…"  The crisis in Ukraine has been a reminder for many eastern EU member states of what they gained when they joined both the EU and Nato - a greater sense of economic and political stability.  "People are concerned about what's happening in Ukraine," says the political analyst Konstanty Gebert.  Unlike countries further west, this is happening on their doorstep.  "We in Poland who have always been considered somewhat paranoid and untrustworthy with our Russia obsession inside the EU," he argues, "have the unhappy feeling of having been right".

A sobering thought on this tenth anniversary.

^ I have Polish family and friends and know what they mean. Once Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe in the 1990s the majority of countries behind the Iron Curtain "fought" long and hard to join NATO and the EU so that the Russians couldn't invade and occupy them as they did in Czarist and Soviet times and now in modern Russia occupying parts of the Ukraine. Only those who have lived under an invader/occupier know what that is like and anyone 23 or older in Eastern Europe knows what that is like. These countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary and Poland) may have had to give up a lot to bring their policies and budgets in line with the EU and NATO, but to them the benefits of economic and military protection from Russia was more important. Eastern Germany didn't have to do a thing as they simply joined NATO and the EU the day they were reunited with West Germany. I don't blame any of these countries for what they had to do to join. I just hope that if something happens the western countries of NATO and the EU do not simply run home and leave their allies alone. It happened in World War 2 when the French and British gave Czechoslovakia willingly to Nazi Germany and then did nothing (except declare war) when Poland was attacked. ^

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-eu-27240759