The way the (pro-EU) Guardian portrays it, he might well be with his speech as Poland took over the rotating EU presidency* yesterday:

Assuming the rotating presidency of the EU for the first time, Donald Tusk rounded on the leaders of Germany, France, Italy, and Britain over their handling of the sovereign debt crisis in Greece, immigration, EU spending and the budget. He charged them with posing as European champions while pandering to a new form of Euroscepticism for personal political gain, and of using fears about immigration to curb freedom of travel in Europe.

The passionate and optimistic defence of the EU from the Polish leader was completely at odds with the mood in Brussels and other EU capitals, where commitment to the union is being eroded by the rise of populist Brussels-bashing, squabbling leaders, and soaring mistrust between member states. In defiance of the gloomy European zeitgeist, Tusk said: “The European Union is great. It is the best place on Earth to be born and to live your life.”

And you know what? Think about it for half a moment, you’ll see it’s more or less true. Yes – even the “best place on Earth” bit. Greater equality, freedom, cultural and historical variety, opportunity, social support, comfort and safety than pretty much anywhere.

This is very easy to forget amid all the current talk of crisis and default. But it remains the case that the member states of the European Union are pretty much all still more prosperous and have better qualities of life than at all but a very few points in history (and those very few points *all* came within the last decade, during the boom before the bust).

Hell, you couldn’t get a better illustration of this point than to note that yesterday, 1st July, the day Poland took over the presidency, was the 95th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. One of the bloodiest battles of all time, leaving more than a million dead – with bones and artefacts still rising to the surface almost a century later – and a key reminder of the turmoil of Europe past.

1st July is also, nicely, the anniversary of the entirely peaceful, voluntary 1569 foundation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the largest, most diverse European state of the 16th-17th centuries – ruled by an elective monarchy held in check by a senate and elected parliament. Little-known in Western Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth deserves to be far more widely studied – not least because it arose at a time that the western half of the continent was submersed in a series of bloody religious conflicts that would last the best part of a century, while it was not only democratically progressive, but also religiously tolereant and ethnically diverse.

Poland has shown Europe the way in time of crisis before, in other words. But she has also frequently been a little ahead of her time. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s elective head of state and bicameral parliament, not to mention its religious tolerance, would not become the norm in Europe for another three centuries. And then there’s Solidarity – a movement Tusk was a part of (along with current European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek) – which is now regarded by many as the initial rumbling that helped set in motion the collapse of Soviet communism, kicked off several years before similar popular movements came to prominence in the rest of the Warsaw Pact.

Is this broad view of Tusk coming too soon for a European Union currently caught up in introspection and blame-throwing? Is his sense of historical perspective a little too visionary for an EU whose leaders have not only spent most of the last two decades tinkering with details, but who are also currently more concerned with short-term worries? And is the six months of the rotating presidency anywhere near long enough to start pushing through any serious reform?

Time will tell. But it is, at any rate, a welcome and refreshing change to hear what to me sounds like a rational optimism coming from someone with real influence in the EU after months of hand-wringing and *years* of stagnation.

Sod Tony Blair as an elected President of the EU – if he handles the next six months well, perhaps Donald Tusk could be our man?

Update: I’m starting to have strong hopes for the Polish presidency. Now this from Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski:

In more general terms, Rostowski argued, politicians have to “start thinking in terms of common European interest” and show solidarity – a mantra of the Polish EU presidency – amid signs of “growing estrangement” between northern and southern member states.

“The short-sightedness of some opposition parties in some countries regarding common institutions and programmes is breath-taking,” he said. “If we don’t hang together, we all hang separately.”

Update 2:Yet more good stuff from Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski:

it is not enough to be optimistic and positive. We also must be realistic. The EU does face painful decisions in the months and years to come. Poland will not accept that the answer lies in less solidarity, or “less integration”. That is the sure path to disintegration, leaving us all worse off – and with new divisions.

…Too many of Europe’s rules and regulations were designed for very different times.

…Europe will make a strategic mistake if it retreats into unhappy introspection.

…Thirty years ago the Gdansk ship-workers led the way and changed the world, as millions of Poles joined the Solidarity movement to insist on their basic democratic rights and freedoms. The Polish presidency wants to help the EU draw strength from the ambition and patient wisdom of that movement. Poland itself is an EU success story.

* Yes, this one still exists too. Branded as the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, as opposed to the Presidency of the European Council (Herman van Rompuy), Presidency of the European Parliament (Jerzy Buzek), or Presidency of the European Commission (José Manuel Barroso).

Now this is sad news indeed.

One of the leading lights of the Solidarity movement – undeniably one of the most important of the late 20th century – and still active in standing up for what’s right (just last year becoming a figurehead for opposition to the Polish government’s fresh anti-communist purges). A former Polish Foreign Minister and historian, he’d also been suggested as a good candidate for first president of the EU, and was one of the few MEPs with genuine name recognition value.

His kind are rare – and exactly what the EU needs if it’s ever going to emerge as something truly worthwhile.

Update: I’d forgotten all about Geremek’s book The Common Roots of Europe. I’m sure I’ve read it, but don’t have a copy. Off to the library, because this all seems strangely appropriate, what with today’s shift in blogging focus and altered tagline. From Amazon’s description: “[Geremek] suggests that it is in everyone’s interest to understand Europe in a wider sense, not just as a geographical concept, but as a political and cultural one too. He discusses unity, variety and collective identity in medieval Europe, social and economic structures in East and West, and the continuity and change in European identity in the intervening centuries.”

Sod it, perhaps I’ll buy the thing…

Good work, Polish types! The nutty twins have been separated, and a more pro-EU Prime Minister finally in place. About time – as one of the largest of the new EU member states, getting Poland to fully participate in and contribute to EU affairs is essential. For the last two years, however, it’s been far more trouble than it’s worth.

The Beatroot has more – including a live-blog of the results. (And it’s well worth flicking back through the archives for lots of electoral goodness there over the last few weeks.)

Meanwhile, boo Switzerland! We don’t like to see far right parties getting the largest share of the vote, ta very much. Then again, the leftie loons who decided to start fights with the police were hardly much better. I mean, you live in Switzerland, for Christ’s sake… It’s hardly worth getting that het up about things, is it now? (This result does, of course, also mean increased Swiss isolationism, and even less chance of another referendum on EU entry being proposed any time soon. Ho hum…)

Get rid of at least one of the psycho twins now that you’ve got a general election two years early. Poland should always have been at the forefront of the 2004 EU intake’s push for serious reform – but thanks to the Kaczynski brothers it has instead ended up both isolated and one of the EU’s biggest internal problems.

For more on the run-up to the Polish parliamentary vote that decided on a snap general election, check out always tip-top Poland blog The Beatroot from a few days back (and again), and on the vote to dissolve parliament itself.

More from the Financial Times, Washington Post and International Herald Tribune.

Anyone even slightly familiar of the chain of events that led to the fall of the Soviet Union and European communism will be aware of the importance of the Solidarity movement. Short version: it was one of the sparks that helped bring the entire system crashing down – a popular, grass-roots protest against the repression of the communist state that showed beyond all doubt that the dictatorship of the proletariat was little more than dictating TO the proletariat.

As such, you’d think that any suggestion that either Tadeusz Mazowiecki – one of Solidarity’s leaders, imprisoned for his crime of freedom of expression, and Poland’s first non-communist Prime Minister after the Second World War – or Bronislaw Geremek – another leading member of Solidarity who went on to become Poland’s Foreign Minister in the 1990s – would have pretty impeccable credentials as opponents of communism, right?

Not according to the current Polish government.

I’m late with this, and had been meaning to do something earlier – not least after Alex Harrowell called for a blogland attempt to show solidarity with Solidarity a few days ago.

In short, the Polish government has passed a law demanding – not for the first time – that “leading public figures” (journalists and academics as well as politicians) sign an oath stating that they are not, nor ever have been communists, and that they never “collaborated” with the old communist regime.

Yes, this is a way of disposing of political enemies. No, it should not be allowed. In fact, I’m pretty damn certain that under the terms of Poland’s EU membership, it isn’t.

That, however, has not prevented this controversial Polish law from depriving Geremek of his – democratically elected, please note – seat in the European Parliament – depriving not only his constituents of their democratic representative, but the EU as a whole from benefiting from his decades of political experience. This press release gives some of the background (and three cheeers to British MEP Graham Watson for being the one to bring up the question.

There are all kinds of potential ramifications for the working of the EU if this is allowed to go unchallenged – after all, it means that any member state could unilaterally decide to disqualify its sitting MEPs and keep replacing them until it has ones it likes, which is hardly democratic.

But Geremek is just the most high-profile tip of the iceberg, thanks to holding elected office (Mazowiecki is currently less prominent outside Poland, despite being co-founder of one of Poland’s most prominent liberal political parties and the author of the preamble to the current Polish constitution).

Hundreds – thousands, even – of Poles are also being forced to sign this declaration. Politicans, civil servants, journalists. Even ignoring the distasteful nature of such forced declarations and the stupidity of such a thing in a country in which anyone working in the public sector aged over the age of about 35 most likely had to work with the old communist authorities at some point, this law is spreading beyond Poland in its effect. It is not just a national issue.

Because not only has an MEP now been deprived of his seat thanks to devious and distasteful machinations within his own nation state, now people who are not even Polish nationals – indeed, who were not even in Poland during communist rule – are being forced to sign. How do I know? Because the chap who runs the Poland-centred Beatroot blog has been told he has to if he wishes to continue working as a journalist in the country.

Poland is in sore need of its own version of Edward Murrow at the moment. The web might be the answer. Clamp down on freedom of speech and freedom of association? No thanks, chum.

Poland is increasingly becoming a continent-wide problem – and if the current Polish government isn’t challenged soon, the damage may take years to fix. So, as the Beatroot asks, sign the petition in support of Geremek, and make some noise about what’s happening to both him and others in Poland. Write to MPs, write to MEPs, blog about it, whatever. We may all be powerless as individuals, but the whole point of Solidarity was that together we can achieve great things. It’s increasingly beginning to look like it’s time for a new, Europe-wide Solidarity movement in support of Polish freedom from the new lot of nutjobs they’ve got in charge.

Added Polish unpleasantness, just to emphasise the point:

Nice lot, eh?

OK, so they’ve got a set of identical twins running the country – unusual, but not necessarily mad – yet they do seem to be ushering in some potentially worrying electoral changes and acting somewhat vindictively towards political opponents.

Now Poland – the largest and likely most important of the new EU member states who joined two years ago – appears to be shifting away from Brussels. This despite the Prime Ministerial Kaczynski twin’s vaguely pro-EU tone on his coming to office a few days ago. Now, however, the twins have launched a purge of pro-EU officials, apparently being pitched as an attempt to clamp down on communists. (And no, my anti-EU friends, this is not an excuse for you to churn out the usual tedious “EUSSR” rubbish and claims that the EU is a communist plot in the comments.)

Is this part of the rightwards shift (NYT reg req.) in the country, as seen in the rise of the skinheads in anti-Gay riots and racially-motivated attacks both in Poland and in Germany during the World Cup? Is there something even more sinister at work in this country with a history of, shall we say, “strong leaders”? Or is it merely a childishly petulant toys out of pram moment prompted by those potato jibes from Germany?

Of course the question is, if this right-wing sibling pair move away from Brussels and simultanously start persecuting former communists, where are they going to look for allies? I can hardly imagine Russia’s ex-KGB President being too pleased at teaming up with a country trying to remove his former secret police colleagues from positions of influence.

But then again, I’ll freely admit to knowing next to nothing about Poland. Some blogs that may help include that of the Economist’s Edward Lucas, p3, The Beatroot (currently on holiday), Our Man in Gdansk, and Polish Police and Administrative Corruption. Any others you know of, let me know. Something odd’s certainly happening over there, and it will have serious implications for the rest of the EU if Poland goes mental…