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Poland’s EU-Council Presidency under Evaluation: Navigating Europe through Stormy Waters

December 2013

Publisher: Nomos
Editor: I.P. Karolewski/Th. Mehlhausen/M. Sus

Authors:

Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski

Leipzig University

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Navigating Europe through Stormy Waters

Poland’s EU-Council

Presidency under Evaluation

Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski | Thomas Mehlhausen

Monika Sus [eds.]

BUT_Karolewski_0305-0.indd 3 28.08.13 09:32

Table of Contents

Lists of Abbreviations 7

Chapter 1: Introduction

How to analyse the rotating EU Council Presidency after the Lisbon

Treaty? 9

Thomas Mehlhausen and Ireneusz Paweł Karolewski

Chapter 2: Coping with multiple challenges

Overview of the general performance of the Polish Council Presidency 27

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński

Chapter 3: Playing the service provider, gaining in trust

Institutional aspects of the Polish Council Presidency 43

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

Chapter 4: Ambitious realism

The Eastern Partnership as a top priority of the Polish EU Presidency 67

Irene Hahn-Fuhr and Kai-Olaf Lang

Chapter 5: Between honest broker and self-centred president

Energy and climate Policy during the Polish EU Council Presidency 85

Ernest Wyciszkiewicz

Chapter 6: Common Foreign and Security Policy

A back seat brokerage over issues of national interest 99

Monika Sus

Chapter 7: Turning “yesterday’s business” into a key political priority

Polish Presidency and the EU Single Market 117

Paweł Tokarski

Chapter 8: Bringing impetus to the EU enlargement process

The role of the Polish Presidency 131

Janusz Józef Węc

Chapter 9: Testing the limits of being an honest broker

The Polish EU Presidency and the negotiation of the Multiannual

Financial Framework 2014–2020 147

Mario Kölling

Chapter 10: Mission satisfactorily accomplished The Polish EU

Council Presidency as an efficient service provider with moderate

results 163

Ireneusz Paweł Karolewski, Thomas Mehlhausen, Monika Sus

Notes on Contributors 177

Table of Contents

Lists of Abbreviations

ACER Agency for Cooperation of Energy Regulator

AFET Committee on Foreign Affairs

CAP Common Agricultural Policy

CDSP Common Defence and Security Policy

CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy

COCON Working Party of Consular Affairs

COCOP Working Party on the Application of Specific Measures to

Combat Terrorism

COJUR Working Party on Public International Law

COMAR Working Party on the Law of the Sea

COMPET Competitiveness Council

COREPER Committee of Permanent Representatives

COTER Working Party on Terrorism

CWG Council Working Groups

DCFTA Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement

EC European Commission

ECOFIN Economic and Financial Affairs Council

ECON Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee

ECR European Conservatives and Reformers

EEAS European External Action Service

EED European Endowment for Democracy

EDF European Development Fund

EFSF European Financial Stability Facility

ENP European Neighbourhood Policy

ENPARD European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture & Rural

Development

ENVY Enviromental Council

EP European Parliament

EPP European People’s Party

EPSCO Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs

Council

ESM European Stability Mechanism

EU European Union

EYCS Education, Youth, Culture and Sport Council

FAC Foreign Affairs Council

GAC Council for General Affairs

GDP Gross Domestic Product

GNI Gross National Income

HR High Representative

IMCO Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee

ITER International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor

JHA Justice and Home Affairs Council

MENA Middle East and North Africa

MFF Multiannual Financial Framework

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NGO Non-governmental Organization

NSI Noth-South Interconnections

PCA Partnership and Cooperation Agreement

PiS Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość)

PM Prime Minister

PO Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska)

PSL Polish People’s Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe)

RELEX Working Party of Foreign Relations Counsellors

S&D Group of Socialists and Democrats

SIMFO Single Market Forum

SLD Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej)

SMA Single Market Act

TTE Transport, Telecomunication and Energy Council

TEU Treaty on European Union

Lists of Abbreviations

Chapter 1: Introduction

How to analyse the rotating EU Council Presidency after the

Lisbon Treaty?

Thomas Mehlhausen and Ireneusz Paweł Karolewski

When Poland took over the baton from the Hungarian Council Presidency

it faced numerous uncertainties. Given that it was only the fourth Presidency

to operate under the recently enforced Lisbon Treaty there was little knowl-

edge available as to how far the new institutional design restrains the in-

cumbency’s scope of action. Moreover, Poland held a Presidency for the

very first time and it could not draw on any administrative experience. To

make the challenge even harder, the Euro crisis threatened to overshadow

the entire term and it was an open question as to whether Poland as a non-

Euro member would be able to leave any mark on its term. It is against this

turbulent background that this book intends to evaluate the performance of

the Polish Council Presidency.

The aim of this edited volume is yet broader. We study the Polish term as

a crucial case to learn about the new profile of the rotating EU Council

Presidency after the Lisbon Treaty. The point of departure is the limited

systematic research on the rotating EU Council Presidency after the Lisbon

Treaty. The bulk of the literature on the topic of the EU Council Presidency

is rather descriptive in nature. One strand consists of single-case studies of

individual Presidencies assessing their general performance (e.g. O Nuallain

1985; Ludlow 1998; Maurer 2000; Herolf 2010) while the other explores its

formal functioning and legal status (e.g. Edwards and Wallace 1977; Wal-

lace 1985; Bassompierre 1988). The latter contributions often advise against

overestimating the impact of the Presidency on the outcome of the EU pol-

icies. However, in recent years a growing body of literature challenges this

view (Elgstrøm 2003a; Kollman 2003; Tallberg 2006; Naurin and Wallace

2008; Thomson, 2008; Bunse 2009). This volume builds on the existing

literature by pointing to the various functions attributed to the Presidency

and linking it to the theoretical debate on the Presidency’s impact on EU

decision-making.

Taken together, we contribute to the current debate on the rotating EU

Council Presidencies by incorporating and refining the conventional theo-

retical insights and applying it to the Polish term. By covering virtually all

relevant policy fields, this in-depth analysis of the arguably most ambitious

Presidency since the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty hopefully provides

for a balanced and differentiated evaluation of the profile of the reformed

EU Council Presidency.

In this introductory chapter we set out with an overview of the major

institutional changes of the Lisbon Treaty pertaining to the rotating EU

Council Presidency. We then introduce the three-tier theoretical framework

that spans the common frame for the empirical studies of the major policy

fields during the Polish term. Finally, we sketch a succinct summary of the

following chapters.

The rotating EU Council Presidency in its new design

Even though the rotating Council Presidency still grants the country at the

helm additional access to EU governance, the Treaty of Lisbon significantly

constrained its competences, particularly within the EU foreign and security

policy and regarding the country’s visibility on the European stage. The shift

of responsibilities from the rotating Presidency to the non-rotating institu-

tions – to the President of the European Council and to the High Represen-

tative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR) – within most issues

related to the external representation, Common Foreign and Security Policy

(CFSP), Common Defence and Security Policy (CSDP) and the coordination

of national foreign policies, deprived the country holding the Presidency of

hitherto existing political channels which enabled the member state to stay

visible on the international and European stage and to influence the policy

of the EU. For instance, the rotating Presidency’s previous task to prepare

and chair the meetings of the European Council has been shifted to the newly

established President of the European Council. Although the bulk of the

decisions are already agreed to in the working groups, in the Committee of

Permanent Representatives (COREPER) and in the Council, the most crucial

and sensitive issues are still dealt with in the European Council. Moreover,

the summits of the European Council are major media events which until

recently gave the government at the helm the chance to publicly celebrate

the final deals. However, the Lisbon Treaty reduced the role of the presiding

government to the level comparable to many other participants of the Inter-

governmental Conference.

Thomas Mehlhausen and Ireneusz Paweł Karolewski

The Lisbon Treaty reforms were supposed to increase the effectiveness

of EU decision-making following the EU’s Eastern enlargement in 2004 and

2007. The elimination of the rotating agenda-setting as well as broker op-

portunities, both within the European Council and in the Foreign Affairs

Council, in favour of a permanent arrangement aimed to enhance continuity

and effectiveness. However, this arrangement risks the establishment of ad-

ditional autonomous agents with considerable power at the highest levels of

intergovernmental bargaining (Pollack 1997; Tallberg 2000). In addition,

the growing centralisation of the decision-making process within the Euro-

pean Council makes it more susceptible to informal influence, exerted in

particular by the most powerful member states. This was apparently one of

the reasons why the smaller states were keen to avoid these institutional

reforms (Schoutheete and Wallace 2002: 21; Bunse 2009).

It is still too early to pinpoint what exact consequences the Lisbon Treaty

reforms will have for the EU Council Presidencies. The Spanish, Belgian

and Hungarian Presidencies were rather transitional in character, since they

had to cope with various hurdles in the implementation of the Treaty of

Lisbon. For instance, the Spanish Presidency had to come to terms with the

initially underspecified role of the newly appointed High Representative.

The Belgian incumbency faced some obstacles during the introduction of

the Citizens’ Initiative and new rules on comitology. Finally, the Hungarian

term was impaired by both internal and external shocks. On the one hand,

the domestic and international criticisms of the introduction of a new con-

stitution shed doubt on the government’s adherence to European values; on

the other hand, the Presidency was overshadowed by numerous external

shocks, such as the euro crisis, the civil war in Libya and the tsunami in

Japan. After this cumbersome transition phase, we may assume that the Pol-

ish Presidency is the first one capable of bringing new insights into the post-

Lisbon profile of a rotating Presidency.

A three-tier approach to the EU Council Presidencies

We embark on the study of the Polish EU Council Presidency in three steps.

First, we follow the mainstream of the descriptive literature by evaluating

its performance along the major functions of this rotating office. This facil-

itates the assessment of the newly introduced institutional reform of the

Presidency (functional dimension). Second, we strive to explicitly address

the tension between the formal neutrality norm and the tempting opportunity

Chapter 1: Introduction

for the incumbent to advance its national interests through informal policy

shaping (behavioural dimension). In this sense, the volume is to contribute

to the theoretical debate on the behavioural rationale of the government in

charge. Third, we take into account that the success of the Presidency, how-

ever it may be defined, does not exclusively depend on its performance. We

therefore adopt a contingency dimension for our evaluation by distinguish-

ing between endogenous and exogenous variables that may affect the out-

come. This conceptual avenue intends to stimulate a balanced and theoreti-

cally informed evaluation of the Presidency.

The functional dimension

We argue that political institutions including the rotating EU Council Pres-

idency are established to accommodate a functional demand legitimising

their very existence. A remarkable dissent prevails in the literature as to the

specific tasks a Presidency is supposed to fulfil. We largely follow the ap-

proach proposed by Daniela Kietz (2007a), though subsuming ‘strategic

leadership’ and ‘pro-active initiation’ under the general term of ‘agenda-

setting’, and define six functions.1 However, not all functions might be rel-

evant to each policy field, since they partly refer to different stages of deci-

sion-making – e.g. eliciting the members’ position, deliberations, voting and

finally striking a compromise with external parties – and most issues are

unlikely to pass the entire procedure during one term.

First, the management of the administrative procedures involves the or-

ganisation of more than 1,000 meetings on several institutional levels re-

quiring a careful and timely preparation (Łada 2011: 7). This absorbs con-

siderable bureaucratic capabilities and would certainly be insurmountable

for the staff in Brussels given its restricted personnel capacities. It tends to

particularly overburden the small states which, in turn, fuelled the perceived

need to reform the rotating office and propelled the establishment of trio-

presidencies. Second, agenda-setting refers to the adding of a country’s own

priorities to the predetermined topics as well as the structuring and excluding

of issues which is a competency shared with the Commission. The govern-

ment at the helm is expected to shift attention towards strategic long-term

1 Tallberg (2003) proposes ‘agenda-shaping’ to broaden the concept but we use the

more commonly used term of ‘agenda-setting’ in a broader sense which entails ‘agen-

da-structuring’ and ‘agenda-exclusion’.

Thomas Mehlhausen and Ireneusz Paweł Karolewski

goals and may also initiate new projects which aim to advance developments

in areas where the holder of the Presidency has a certain expertise or repu-

tation. Even though this accounts for only ten to twenty per cent of the issues,

agenda structuring or the exclusion of certain issues in the course of the

Presidency might prove decisive for the outcome of the Presidency (Tallberg

2003). Third, the Presidency is assigned with the task of internal media-

tion in the Council to form a common ground that can be externally com-

municated as a common position. The challenge is greater the higher the

voting threshold, i.e. simple majority, qualified majority or unanimity. For

this purpose the presiding government may choose both the size of meetings,

e.g. multilateral or bilateral deliberations, and convoke ‘confessionals’ dur-

ing which the parties reveal their intrinsic preferences, minimum require-

ments and so-called ‘red lines’ (Wessels and Traguth 2010: 304). For the

sake of effectiveness, ‘confessionals’ enable the Presidency holder to detect

Pareto efficient solutions formerly obfuscated by the secretive bargaining

strategy of the participants. However, this presupposes discretion and a suf-

ficient degree of impartiality to establish mutual trust. Fourth, the Presidency

is empowered to represent the Council in terms of an inter-institutional

agency, in particular for the co-decision procedure with the European Par-

liament, where it is supposed to reach an agreement which best fits the

Council’s majority position. By moving between the two negotiation arenas

the Presidency is designed to spot and pinpoint the best compromise for the

Council’s majority. For this purpose, it is given some leeway in order to

eventually reach a compromise and enhance the effectiveness of inter-insti-

tutional legislature. Fifth, the external representation is set to advocate the

Council’s interests in negotiations with third states. This function resembles

to a great extent the inter-institutional agency. The most institutionalised

field where the Presidency performs this function is the bargaining with EC

applicants. Typically, it is the Presidency that paves the way to the final trade

and association agreements as well as to the start or conclusion of accession

negotiations. Sixth, we include the media spinning of the Presidency’s re-

sults in its communicative task of staging the media coverage, instilling the

essence of the achievements on the national public, and celebrating the suc-

cess of the Presidency. Although it might not be termed a formal function,

it is arguably a welcomed side-effect and an implicit objective: the European

Council summits – as the most visible snapshots of EU decision-making –

are major media events which impact the national public discourses. It can

be qualified as a major element in the EU’s attempt to tackle the problem of

Chapter 1: Introduction

a missing European public sphere and European identity as a prerequisite

for further integration.

The behavioural dimension

The second dimension aims to inquire into the rationale driving the chairing

government. There exist divergent notions of a legitimate Presidency. One

influential line of arguing refers to the Council Secretariat’s handbook for

Presidencies which states:

“The Presidency must, by definition, be neutral and impartial. It is the moderator

for discussions and cannot therefore favour either its own preferences or those

of a particular member state.” (Council Secretariat, cit. in Tallberg 2006:

112-13)

In this reading, the Presidency is supposed to subordinate its individual ob-

jectives to the European common good (Wallace 1985: 16; Metcalfe 1998;

Laffan 2000; Elgstrøm 2003b). If sensitive national interests are at stake, it

should seek another, more neutral broker to ensure impartiality during the

negotiations (Kietz 2007a: 12). The other strand either supposes that states

will nonetheless act self-interestedly (e.g. Tallberg 2006; Bunse 2009) or

even list the pursuit of national interest explicitly as one of the Presidency’s

major purposes (Schout and Vanhoonacker 2006; Wessels and Traguth

2010). Indeed, the small states’ fierce opposition to the European Council

reform suggests that for them the Presidency is not merely an organisational

service to the community but a rare occasion to shape European politics

(Bunse 2009: 2). If the Presidency is better understood as an ‘amplifier’

rather than a ‘silencer’ of national interests (Bengtsson, Elgstrøm and Tall-

berg 2004), then the privileged access to informal channels of influence must

account for the attractiveness of the Presidency’s office given that the in-

cumbent is not granted any additional formal power.

Therefore, we juxtapose two opposed behavioural orientations of how the

Presidency may operate. On the one hand, the incumbent President may

strive to enhance the European common good as an honest broker, regardless

of whether it runs counter to national preferences.2 Proponents of this con-

ception argue that an effective pursuit of national interests, if attempted

2 This corresponds to what Schout (1998) calls a ‘neutral broker’ and descriptively

resembles the term ‘responsibility without power’ (Dewost 1984; Wallace 1985).

Thomas Mehlhausen and Ireneusz Paweł Karolewski

nonetheless, will be in any case impeded by utterly adverse external cir-

cumstances: the lack of added formal power, the short term in office, the

heavy administrative burden, unforeseen external shocks, the issue legacy

dominating the agenda, and the interplay of various veto players with het-

erogeneous preferences (e.g. Bassompiere 1988; Verbeke and Van de Vo-

orde 1994; Nugent 1995). As one links the behavioural orientation of a

‘neutral broker’ to the above-mentioned functional obligations, this norm-

compliant behaviour should entail

• organising the meetings efficiently to ensure smooth proceedings,

• highlighting topics as urgent or strategically crucial to the EU,

• seeking broad majorities or, if possible, even consensus,

• representing genuinely the Council’s majority position both in the inter-

institutional and the external bargaining,

• media staging the negotiation results as a joint achievement of the EU in

order to contribute to the European common good.

On the other hand, the presiding government might be tempted to use its

formal position as a self-centred president to advance its foreign policy ob-

jectives (Thomson et al. 2006; Schalk et al. 2007; Warntjen 2008). Notwith-

standing the lack of formal power, the Presidency possesses considerable

organisational, procedural and informational assets: the leverage over the

setting of the meetings – face-to-face confessionals, unilateral or multilateral

consultations – and their frequency, the capacity of adding and prioritising

issues of national interest while ignoring unfavourable topics, as well as the

position to selectively channel information between the negotiating parties

or to even purposively play parties off against each other (cf. Tallberg 2003,

2006, 2008; Bunse 2009). In line with the concept of a self-centred president,

we would expect the Presidency to aim to

• organise the meetings effectively in terms of its own preferences,

• highlight topics as urgent or crucial to the member’s foreign policy,

• seek sufficient majorities compatible with national interests despite more

consensual alternatives, or to otherwise stall negotiations,

• represent the Council’s majority position in a biased way both in the

inter-institutional and the external bargaining in order to steer compro-

mises in a favoured direction,

• media stage the negotiation results self-centredly as a distinctive achieve-

ment of the incumbent Presidency.

Chapter 1: Introduction

These idealised behavioural orientations require three qualifications.3 First,

there is no theoretical reason why these conceptions should indeed be com-

petitive. Quite on the contrary, empirical studies on the modes of action

within the Council confirm that strategic and non-strategic actions can both

be identified depending on the particular issues under negotiation (Niemann

2008; Pollack and Shaffer 2008). Second, several patterns of behaviour be-

tween these two extremes are conceivable (Lewis 2008). For example, gov-

ernments may act rhetorically by pursuing their national interests as long as

they can justify it on valid grounds (Schimmelfennig 2003). In addition,

similarly legitimate norms, such as neutrality, effectiveness and consensus-

building (Elgstrøm 2006: 178), might be played off against each other, en-

abling states to advance their national goals in the shadow of accepted norms

(Mehlhausen 2009a; see also Tallberg 2004: 1002), e.g. by quitting consul-

tations on the pretext of efficiency once a preferred outcome is feasible.

Third, both extremes are strategies difficult to fully realise. On the one hand,

impartiality is virtually impossible if the objective of efficiency forces the

incumbent to push negotiations in a certain direction deemed unfair by some

participants (Elgstrøm 2003b). On the other hand, the sheer pursuit of na-

tional foreign policy objectives is likely to be countered with heavy criticism

and ostracism. Therefore, the rationale of steering the Presidency is not a

matter of principle but rather of degree.

The empirical question is thus (a) under which conditions the incumbents

tend to what rationale and (b) which overall pattern of behaviour can be

discerned. The following table summarises the main ideas of the first two

dimensions.

3 Kirchner (1992) is the first study with similar theoretical aspirations. These two in-

terpretations assume different modes of action. The respect for the neutrality norm is

what sociological institutionalism would expect in terms of a ‘logic of appropriate-

ness’, whilst the self-interested abuse of the Presidency’s formal position corresponds

to rational choice institutionalism according to a ‘logic of consequences’ (Hall and

Taylor 1996).

Thomas Mehlhausen and Ireneusz Paweł Karolewski

Table 1: Contending notions of how to execute the Presidency’s functions

self-

conception/

function

honest broker

aim: EU’s collective interest/

common good

self-centred president

aim: national/governmental interest

management effective management of ad-

ministrative tasks and organi-

sation of meetings

management according to national in-

terests through manipulation of the

frequency and type of Council meet-

ings

agenda-set-

ting

supplementing and structur-

ing the agenda according to

long-term goals of the Com-

munity

supplementing and structuring the

agenda according to national interests;

omission or masking-out of inconve-

nient goals

internal me-

diation

identification of potential

compromises; preference for

majority rather than minority

positions

use of information asymmetry; focus-

ing on compromises favouring nation-

al interests; preference for minority

positions whenever they reflect na-

tional interests

inter-institu-

tional agency

genuine reflection of the

Council’s majority position in

the European legislature, in

particular with the European

Parliament in the co-decision

procedure

biased reflection of the Council’s ma-

jority position in the European legis-

lature, in particular with the European

Parliament in the co-decision proce-

dure, to push through the country’s

own position within the Council

external rep-

resentation

genuine reflection of the

Council’s majority position in

negotiations with third states

biased reflection of the Council’s ma-

jority position in negotiations with

third states to push through the coun-

try’s own position within the Council

media spin-

ning

staging the negotiation re-

sults, in particular vis-à-vis its

own population, as the EU’s

achievements

staging the negotiation results, in par-

ticular vis-à-vis its national popula-

tion, as a merit of its own Presidency,

thereby disguising national interests

as contributions to the European com-

mon good

The contingency dimension

The success of a Council Presidency, regardless of the criteria for success,

partly depends on circumstances beyond the Presidency’s control (Schout

and Vanhoonacker 2006; Kietz 2007a). In order to acknowledge this con-

tingency of the Presidency’s performance, we distinguish between endoge-

Chapter 1: Introduction

nous and exogenous variables that determine the Presidency’s performance

(see also Bunse 2009: 16-17). The policy field studies pay attention to the

wider context in which the operation of a Presidency is placed. The endoge-

nous variables include domestic background, reputation, special resources

and timely preparation, whereas exogenous variables cover sensitivity of the

negotiated issue, external shocks, given deadlines or usurpative initiatives

by other actors.

One of the most essential endogenous variables is the domestic environ-

ment in the country holding the Presidency. A democratically elected gov-

ernment can act autonomously in international negotiations only to a limited

degree (Putnam 1988). There are three important obstacles to a smooth

Presidency. First of all, upcoming parliamentary or presidential elections

may severely impede the incumbent’s leadership capacity since the govern-

ing parties have to simultaneously run an election campaign at home and, if

unsuccessful, a new government can exchange the Presidency team. Second,

an unstable government coalition or a strong opposition may constrain the

Presidency’s flexibility, which is pivotal for an efficient term. Third, an

overall sceptical attitude of the national population may considerably reduce

the Presidency’s ambitions in a certain policy field or regarding further in-

tegration in general.

A good reputation constitutes a trust-enforcing resource for a mediator.

A state known to adamantly pursue its national interests is suspected of

abusing its improved formal status as an additional strategic resource and

might face a tougher term in office. Since confessionals presuppose confi-

dence in the broker’s impartiality, the participating members might start to

conceal their intrinsic preference or even openly protest against the practices

of the incumbent Presidency.

A profound and timely preparation may prove to be as relevant as the

availability of special resources such as expertise in a policy field or special

relations to third states (Tallberg 2008). The Presidency’s information ad-

vantage allows for a better detection of compromises and thus can provide

the incumbent with alternative solutions to collective problems and may help

to convince other member states to accept its own favourable outcome.

Furthermore, the Presidency is constrained by several exogenous vari-

ables beyond its control. The first one is the sensitivity of the negotiated

subject, which results from the intensity and distribution of national prefer-

ences within the Council. In particular regarding redistributive issues, hard

bargaining strategies are likely to be adopted which restrain the Presidency’s

informal space for manoeuvre (McKibben 2010: 698). In situations of high

Thomas Mehlhausen and Ireneusz Paweł Karolewski

uncertainty over a decision’s distributional consequences, however, norms

provide a first reliable guidance for one’s behaviour. In principle, it might

be assumed that the lower the intensity of interests, the more likely the ad-

herence to community norms is (Mehlhausen 2009a: 96-114). Moreover, a

heterogeneity of preferences in the Council limits the potential for self-in-

terested conduct since the number of available win-sets dwindles (Putnam

1988) and, consequently, the leeway is narrowed to maximise one’s utility

by advocating the most beneficial out of the feasible outcomes. The most

devastating impact on the initial agenda can be attributed to external shocks

and usurpative initiatives. For example, the Georgian–Russian military con-

flict in 2008 absorbed much of the French Presidency’s resources. Regarding

usurpative initiatives, small states are particularly prone to being overridden

by larger states on the grounds of their limited bureaucratic capacities. For

instance, the French activity in the EU foreign policy during the Czech Pres-

idency in 2009 can be viewed as an attempt to sideline this rather small

country.

The structure of the book

The empirical chapters deal with virtually all policy fields that are central

for an assessment of the Polish Presidency, including the institutional de-

velopments in the EU, the Eastern Partnership, the Climate and Energy Pol-

icy, the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Single Market and the

Enlargement Policy of the EU. This mixture of policy fields gives a broad

picture of the Polish Presidency revealing its individual successes and fail-

ures in particular as well as the potential and limitations of rotating EU

Council Presidencies after the Lisbon Treaty in general.

Chapter 2 focuses on the general performance of the Polish EU Council

Presidency. Piotr Kaczyński argues that the limitations of the Lisbon Treaty

rendered the Polish Presidency politically irrelevant. The largely reduced

role of the rotating EU Council Presidencies became quite visible in the

Polish case, even though Poland is a larger EU member state and it has been

committed to the preparations for the Presidency long before its beginning.

Despite its sizeable political and administrative resources and its overall

effective performance the Polish Presidency fell short of political weight on

the European arena. On the one hand, the Polish government handled the

parliamentary elections and the coordination with the permanent President

of the European Council and the High Representative remarkably well. Also,

Chapter 1: Introduction

Poland’s public administration could achieve some success during the UN

climate and the European patent negotiations despite their lack of experience

from previous Presidencies. On the other hand, however, Poland could exert

only very limited influence on the Schengen policy and particularly econo-

mic governance during the Euro crisis as the Polish initiative to participate

in the Euro group in the ECOFIN meetings was rejected.

Chapter 3 by Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza deals with the

institutional aspects of the Polish Presidency. The authors point to the fact

that the Presidency acted mainly as a service provider and fulfilled its man-

agement tasks, thereby making it comparable to other ‘post-Lisbon’ Presi-

dencies. The Polish government was capable of guaranteeing the smooth

running of the EU’s legislative and administrative processes. Although pub-

lically largely invisible, its role in paving the way for compromises between

27 EU member states, the European Parliament and various interest groups

was very successful. In that role, Poland supported, for instance, the prepa-

ration and follow-up of the European Council and the different Council con-

figurations and mediated between the Council and the European Parliament

in legislative matters and between the different member states in internal

Council matters. Important examples include the agreement on the Sixpack

legislation, the budget for 2012 and the compromise on general arrangements

when issuing EU statements in multilateral forums.

Irene Hahn-Fuhr and Kai-Olaf Lang focus in their chapter on the Eastern

Partnership – a pivotal area of activity for Poland’s Council Presidency.

Despite its relevance on the Polish agenda, little progress could be made in

this realm. The authors characterise Warsaw’s approach as ambitious real-

ism. On the one hand, Poland did not conceal its high expectations in this

area, which was reflected by two major events – the Eastern Partnership

Summit and the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum. On the other hand,

the Polish government recognised the external limitations, for instance the

shift of attention from the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood towards the MENA

region or the adverse effects of the disputed Tymoshenko incarceration. As

a result, Poland followed a rather defensive approach, in order to safeguard

what had already been achieved. However, it resulted from a pragmatic un-

derstanding of the external circumstances, rather than weakness, as Poland

had to stabilise the structure of the Eastern Partnership as well as its funding

against the pressures linked to the ‘Arabellion’.

Chapter 5 by Ernest Wyciszkiewicz deals with the areas of climate and

energy. According to the author, Poland was better prepared to play the role

of neutral broker in the field of energy. This resulted from the fact that the

Thomas Mehlhausen and Ireneusz Paweł Karolewski

energy policy of Poland was much closer to the EU mainstream than its

climate policy. Thus, Poland could easily and credibly use the language of

the EU’s ‘common good’ when speaking about its energy policy plans.

However, in the area of climate policy Poland displayed a more self-centred

approach and the contrast between the Polish position and that of other

member states was quite visible. Nonetheless, in the field of climate policy

Poland was under strong pressure before the Presidency to act in line with

the majority due to its performed function.

In her chapter, Monika Sus explores the Common Foreign and Security

Policy during the Polish Presidency, as particularly in this area the Lisbon

Treaty has introduced significant changes. The author analyses both the in-

stitutional aspects in terms of the cooperation between the Polish Presidency

and European actors involved in CFSP and the conceptual contribution that

the Presidency intended to deliver during its term. Poland can be described

as an ‘attentive supporter‘ of the High Representative. In this sense, Poland

did not only manage to be a supporting Presidency, that is to substitute

Catherine Ashton and cooperate with her in the organisation of informal

meetings, but also it came up with new foreign policy proposals such as the

European Endowment for Democracy. Moreover, the Polish government put

attention and brought new ideas within the Common Security and Defence

Policy, which points to a moderate success of the Polish Presidency under

dynamic institutional circumstances.

Chapter 7 by Paweł Tokarski analyses the problématique of the single

market during the Polish Presidency. The author argues that many initiatives

concerning the EU’s single market became a ‘mission impossible’ for Poland

due to the escalation of the financial and sovereign debt crisis in the Euro-

zone. In this sense, the single market fell victim to the crisis, which had an

impact on the Polish initiatives in this area. Nonetheless, Poland as a single-

market-friendly member state was able to achieve some success, for instance

concerning the progress in the European unitary patent protection, despite

the unfavourable political context. The single market now belongs to the

margins of public attention, compared to other policies that are less complex

and more media-friendly. Therefore, Poland had to deal with difficulties to

overcome the single market fatigue and push forward with some of the

projects.

Chapter 8 by Janusz Józef Węc deals with the EU’s enlargement process.

The author argues that the results of the Polish Presidency in the area of the

enlargement process of the European Union were quite positive. Despite the

objections and doubts expressed by the governments of many member states,

Chapter 1: Introduction

resulting from the sovereign debt crisis of the Eurozone and the need for

internal and external consolidation of the European Union, the Polish Pres-

idency managed to maintain the concept of enlargement of the Union as a

relevant element on the Union’s agenda. Furthermore, the Polish govern-

ment was successful at finalising the text of the accession treaty with Croatia

and brought about the signing of the treaty in December 2011.

Chapter 9 by Mario Kölling explores the negotiation of the post-2013

Multiannual Financial Framework as one of the most critical political chal-

lenges for the European Union since 2011. From the perspective of the Polish

Council Presidency the MFF negotiations were of utmost relevance since

Poland is the main beneficiary of the Cohesion and Structural Funds and the

‘leader’ of the group of member states which defend a strong Cohesion Pol-

icy. In this context, the proposals of the European Commission and the

European Parliament were of particular interest since Poland expected them

to be natural allies in maintaining a generous budget.

In the last chapter we draw conclusions concerning the performance of

the Polish EU Council Presidency. We first discuss theoretical predictions

on the behavioural strategy the Polish government was to adopt. We then

discuss along our analytical framework to what extent Warsaw met the

functional needs, to which self-conception it tended and which endogeneous

and exogeneous challenges it faced. Drawing on the empirical chapters of

this volume we contend that the Polish term may serve as a yardstick for

future incumbents and we argue that in order to be successful a Presidency

must ensure a timely preparation and seek close ties with the HR. Our case

study confirms the expectation that the rotating Presidency will provide

considerably less potential to impact EU politics. Nonetheless, under certain

circumstances it may still turn out to be a crucial channel of influence.

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Coping with multiple challenges

Overview of the general performance of the Polish Council

Presidency

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński

The Treaty of Lisbon has made the rotating Council Presidencies politically

irrelevant. Before December 2009 the national leaders controlled the Coun-

cil activities, and the relationship between the Council and the Parliament

favoured the Council much more than after December 2009. On the one

hand, under the new rules the Council has lost political weight and is now

balanced in almost all its activities by the European Parliament. The Euro-

pean Council, on the other hand, has largely taken over the political clout

from the Council Presidencies, as it now has its own permanent President,

and there is no special role left for the rotating Presidency (see the contri-

bution of Mehlhausen and Karolewski in this volume). On top of these

things, not only have the Council powers towards other institutions been

limited, but also within the Council the rotating Presidency has been limited

by the permanent chair of the Foreign Affairs Council and many of the sub-

sidiary working parties and committees.

Because of all these limitations, the rotating Presidencies are no longer

Union Presidencies. If this concept was not yet fully visible before the Polish

Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second semester of

2011, then the Polish experience is very telling. In the time of economic and

political crises the ongoing dedication to the difficult legislative issues was

probably more important than the political ambitions of individual politi-

cians. For these reasons the Polish Council Presidency of the second half of

2011 can be considered successful.

Statistically, the Polish term was the fourth Presidency from the ten coun-

tries which joined the Union seven years before. After the Slovenian (first

half of 2008), Czech (first half of 2009) and Hungarian Presidency (first half

of 2011) were either insignificant or turbulent, the Polish half-year came

when the ‘novelty’ of newer states was no longer relevant. The older mem-

bers have now experienced Presidencies managed by ‘states in the East’;

there is enough experience in the region to share with the first-timers (Cyprus

in 2012, Lithuania in 2013 and so forth), and the most important question is

no longer ‘can they manage’ the Presidency business, but ‘how can they

help’ to solve the multiple ongoing crises. This question has been particularly

visible in the Polish case, as the previous newer states’ Presidencies were all

low-profile ones (with the half-exception of the first two months of the Czech

Presidency), and the Poles’ ambitions were high. They did not even hide that

the Presidency is the entrance on the scene of this country as one of the EU’s

heavyweights. Therefore, their success or failure – or, in real life, the limits

to their objectives – were important lessons for the country to improve its

position in the EU in the years ahead.

In this chapter I analyse the running of the Council Presidency in the

following order. First, I look at the preparations and the agenda of the Pres-

idency. Then, I explore the various opportunities used and success stories of

the Presidency. Finally, I consider the impact of the anticipated and unfore-

seen problems.

The kick-off

The Presidency being legislatively influential but politically marginalised,

the Polish entry was still spectacular. There were many cultural activities all

around Europe, including masterpiece exhibitions in Madrid and London

and an exhibition in Brussels, “The Power of Fantasy”, called the best con-

temporary art exhibition of the year by the Financial Times (Wullschlager

2011). This wave of activities symbolised the arrival of a new actor on the

European political scene. The beginning of every Presidency is crucial at

least from the public affairs perspective, as the public attention focuses on

the country ‘in the main chair’ only for a few weeks prior to the Presidency

and a few weeks after the Presidency has begun. After a low-profile Hun-

garian Presidency, the Poles thus started with a tremendous cultural and

political offensive and a very well received speech in the European Parlia-

ment by Prime Minister Donald Tusk on the EU’s challenges (Tusk 2011).

Importantly, the domestic political commitment has also been fully con-

firmed. Some Czech (2009) and Hungarian (2011) pre-Presidency experi-

ences were negative in this respect. The lessons from Prague and Budapest

seemed to be: if the partners do not know you well in advance, they will not

allow you to chair meetings effectively. In order not to face the same reality,

the long-standing dedication also meant that the administrative preparations

for the Presidency had been organised already for a couple of years before.

The Polish Presidency preparations included a wide-ranging consultation

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński

programme, including a visit by the entire Polish cabinet to Brussels twelve

months before the Presidency. In the first days of July, the Commission paid

a return visit to Warsaw. The Presidency budget was not affected by austerity

measures adopted in 2009 and 2010. There were more Presidency staffers

than under the preceding Presidency. Out of some 1,200 people working for

the Presidency in Brussels and Warsaw, the Polish Permanent Representa-

tion in Brussels employed up to 300 persons (Hungarian staff in the first half

year numbered about 200 persons). Also, the Presidency hired one of Brus-

sels’ top PR companies to look after its image and Prime Minister Tusk

completed his European tour of capitals offensive ahead of 1 July. In short,

the Presidency was not short of staff, resources or commitment and the

question has been rather about its management and effective organisation.

All of these activities aimed at overcoming the shortcomings of holding the

Presidency for the first time. It turned out very well as there was no criticism

towards the Presidency throughout the six-month term. Quite to the contrary,

some expectations had arisen which were difficult to meet effectively.

An early institutional setback was also indicative of the country’s high

political ambitions. Despite not being a member of the Eurozone, the Polish

Finance Minister was first asked to participate and then denied a seat in the

meetings of the Eurogroup. Two arguments were equally solid. On the one

hand, why would a Polish minister be present if Poland is outside the Euro-

zone? On the other hand, how can the Economic and Financial Affairs

Council (ECOFIN) be effectively run and rubberstamp the Eurogroup de-

cisions if its chairman is not in the room? For the system’s swifter operational

running, it would be welcomed if all rotating ECOFIN chairs were present

in Eurogroup meetings. Poland’s leverage over the Eurogroup was thus non-

existent. The Poles were soldiers in the war on the crisis in the Eurozone (i.e.

work they performed on the Sixpack on the economic governance), but they

were not among the generals who met on 21 July 2011 as a summit of the

heads of state or government of the Euro area member states. The issue of

presence at Eurogroup meetings returned like a boomerang towards the end

of the Polish term (see below).

Despite not presiding over the European Council and the Foreign Affairs

Council, the rotating Presidency still chairs nine other Council formations,

the very influential Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER)

meetings and over 150 other lower-ranked working parties and committees

(table 1). Outside of the Council, the Presidency also had a parliamentary

dimension, since it chaired the cooperation among national parliaments of

the European Union. Within this dimension of the Presidency there were 11

Chapter 2: Coping with multiple challenges

inter-parliamentary meetings of various parliamentary committees (includ-

ing COSAC, energy, finance, agriculture, defence CODACC, and foreign

affairs COFACC). Among the notable topics covered (but unsolved) was the

issue of involvement of national parliaments in the pan-European debate on

European foreign policy.

Table 1: Polish representatives chairing the Council formations and

COREPER

institutional body chairmanship

General Affairs Council State Secretary Mikołaj Dowgielewicz

Competitiveness Council Vice-PM and Minister of Economy Waldemar

Pawlak

Economic and Financial Affairs

Council

Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski

Justice and Home Affairs Council Justice Minister Krzysztof Kwiatkowski* and Inte-

rior Minister Jerzy Miller*

Agriculture and Fisheries Coun-

cil

Agriculture Minister Marek Sawicki

Transport, Telecommunications

and Energy Council**

Infrastructure Minister Cezary Grabarczyk* and

Vice-PM Pawlak (on energy)***

Environment Council Environment Minister Andrzej Kraszewski

Education, Youth, Culture and

Sport Council**

Education Minister Katarzyna Hall*, Higher Edu-

cation Minister Barbara Kudrycka, Culture Minis-

ter Bogdan Zdrojewski or Sport Minister Adam

Giersz*

Employment, Social Policy,

Health and Consumer Affairs

Council**

Labour Minister Jolanta Fedak, Health Minister

Ewa Kopacz or Vice-PM Pawlak (on consumer af-

fairs)

COREPER I Deputy Permanent Representative Karolina Os-

trzyniewska

COREPER II Ambassador Jan Tombiński

Comments: *These ministers were replaced following the establishment of the second

Tusk cabinet in November 2011; ** representation depending on the specific issue; ***

usually represented by one of his deputies

Shaping and reshuffling the agenda, the official priorities for the Council

proceedings were described on 38 pages of its programme. The three main

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński

headlines were: “European integration as a source of growth”, “secure Eu-

rope” and “Europe benefitting from its openness”. The unfolding of events,

however, strongly redefined the priority list. Two events marked the Presi-

dency’s fate regarding its agenda-setting capacity. First, the emergence of

the Eurozone Summits as the decisive moments when the key decisions were

taken on the Euro crisis overshadowed the Poles twofold. Not only had the

Presidency no longer chaired the European Councils but also the Poles were

not even around the table on 21 July or 26 October, when the most important

decisions were discussed. The last December 2011 European Council

showed clearly that the Poles not only were unable to lead, but they were

equally unable to prevent the idea of a Fiscal Compact from emerging. The

proposed treaty was marginalising Poland and other non-Eurozone countries

in the European Union.

The second event bounced Poland back into the leading stream of the

European debate. In his speech in Berlin on 28 November 2011, the Foreign

Minister outlined his European convictions in the following way: “What, as

Poland’s foreign minister, do I regard as the biggest threat to the security

and prosperity of Poland today […]? It’s not terrorism, it’s not the Taliban,

and it’s certainly not German tanks. It’s not even Russian missiles which

President Medvedev has just threatened to deploy on the EU’s border. The

biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland would be the collapse

of the Eurozone” (Sikorski 2011). This speech had some impact on the

European debate on the future of the continent, but at the same time it had

a major impact on the perception of Poland among the German political elite.

The speech was somewhat a culmination of the Poles’ aspirations to voice

their uncompromising pro-Europeanness coupled with emerging economy

and political activity.

There was a clear void in the leadership despite the appearance of a per-

manent chair of the European Council. In the ongoing pan-European debate,

the voices advocating the deepening of the integration were limited. Not only

did the strong pro-EU position of the Polish government at large and Prime

Minister Tusk in particular raise the profile of Poland, but they were also

important voices in the pan-European debate on the future of the integration.

His opening speech in the European Parliament was strongly pro-European:

“The response to the crisis is more of Europe and more of integration” (Tusk

2011). Tusk’s closing speech was also well received, even though in hind-

sight it remained in the shadow of Sikorski’s speech in Berlin. Ever since

the beginning, the Presidency was widely perceived as unquestionably pro-

Chapter 2: Coping with multiple challenges

European, which allowed it to secure a more trusting relationship with the

European Parliament.

The opportunities used

The most important dossier during these six months (or, at least during its

first half) turned out to be the economic governance’s Sixpack. Its successful

adoption in early autumn 2011 was an important step in the EU’s struggle

with the crisis, but it was equally important for the Presidency to show its

ability to be effective. Other difficult yet important issues were the 30-year-

old story of negotiating a status of European patents, the debate on the

Schengen rules and the Schengen enlargement to Romania and Bulgaria, the

beginning of the debate on the Multi-Annual Financial Framework, the suc-

cessful adoption of the annual 2012 budget, and the horizontal issue of cor-

relation tables. The correlation tables aim at improving the transposition of

European laws into national laws and make the process more transparent.

However, for a number of years the Council and the Parliament did not agree

on the shape of the correlation tables; the stalemate put on hold work on at

least two other directives – on child pornography and on fruit juices. The

compromise on correlation tables was finally adopted in October.

The context of each of the rotating Council Presidencies has been central

for their relative successes. The same rule applies to Poland. The dire eco-

nomic situation made the life of the Presidency more difficult. For that rea-

son, when asked to assess the Presidency at its mid-term, the Europe Minister

Dowgielewicz identified trust as the main challenge (Dowgielewicz 2011).

The ongoing economic crisis has strongly challenged European integrity.

However, the system is not operational if the partners (states, institutions)

do not trust one another. Trust, and its consequence, solidarity between EU

members, is a precondition of any form of European integration. “Trust is

the European currency; it is the socio-political glue for the European project”

(Dowgielewicz 2011).

A number of further circumstances have helped Polish ambitions. Poland

established a broad network of contacts to other key players in the European

Union. It developed special ties to the EU’s largest of strongholds, Germany.

Not only could the Presidency learn from the German Presidency, it was also

important for the Presidency not to be undermined by Germany when exer-

cising the Presidency – additional backing makes life easier. Warsaw-Berlin

relations were so close that some third country officials informally com-

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński

plained that the Poles were investing too much in Germany at the expense

of other states. Prime Minister Tusk and Chancellor Merkel enjoy particu-

larly good relations and mutual trust. In the run-up to the Presidency, the

Chancellor was coming to Poland at least once a month. However, this did

not change the German policy that France is its main European partner. Since

autumn 2010, the Poles therefore started to invest strongly in the (Polish–

French–German) Weimar cooperation, especially in defence matters. The

Polish–German relationship, however, has evolved. Since mid-Presidency,

the Poles conveyed a message of the unity of the EU-27 in the context of the

new debate on the treaty changes and strengthening of the integration. Their

objective was for Berlin to include the Polish views as much as possible.

The results were mixed. On many occasions German support was important,

such as to smoothly lead the MAFF negotiations, or to start free trade talks

with Georgia, but on the key issue of the autumn of 2011 – the unity of the

EU-27 – the Germans remained undecided. On the one hand, without them

non-Eurozone countries could probably not become parties to the Fiscal

Compact. On the other hand, their presence is secondary.

The ties were exceptionally close with Berlin, but Warsaw also enjoyed

good relations with many other actors, too. The mostly passive Central and

Eastern European nations did not follow Poland as a regional leader – as in

some corners in Warsaw people like to think about Poland – but they were

learning more and more to at least recognise Warsaw’s regional leadership

on specific issues. They rarely challenged Poland unless the Poles have

proven to be arrogant (see below). Additionally, the Czechs, Slovaks and

Hungarians – the Visegrad partners – were pre-contacted on many occa-

sions.1 Importantly, the Visegrad leaders usually met ahead of the European

Council meetings. Since the main role of the rotating Presidency is to be the

honest broker, most Presidencies often share with their most trusted allies

their national interests, so that those states will de facto represent the Pres-

idency’s national position in Council proceedings. In the Polish case, at least

some of the Visegrad states received lists of issues in which Poland asked

for informal representation.

Apart from Germany and the Visegrad group, Poles also enjoyed good

working relations with countries like Sweden (especially between the For-

eign Ministers) and Denmark (within the Trio) in the Baltic Sea area and

1 These nations together with Poland form the Visegrad Group – a political forum for

exchange of ideas, and at times political cooperation.

Chapter 2: Coping with multiple challenges

with France (as strategic partners, and in cooperation within the Weimar

Triangle together with Germany). France, however, has been among the

most difficult partners for Poland in running the Presidency. A strong pro-

EU voice gained further support in states like Finland, Belgium or Luxem-

bourg, traditionally supportive of the deepening of EU integration. Cooper-

ation with Finland seemed to be effective on two accounts: in the second

half of 2011 the country had been emerging as a potential middle ground

broker in the area of the Multi-Annual Financial Framework, and, secondly,

in November it dropped its veto on Schengen enlargement to Romania and

Bulgaria.

The Polish dedication to European issues has been exceptional. This was

the other positive development that helped them in running the Council. Not

only is a great majority of the population pro-EU (figure 1), but the govern-

ment is also firmly pro-EU and supportive of the EU institutions. The good

relationship with the European Parliament is particularly noteworthy. Due

to the clearly pro-European position of the Polish government, all major EP

political groups – for the first time in years – warmly welcomed the incoming

rotating Council Presidency. The European People’s Party and the Socialist

& Democrats Group, as well as the Liberals and the Greens, all manifested

to be pro-Council. The reason for the positive approach lies in the clearly

pro-European position of the Polish government. Already twelve months

before the Presidency, the entire Polish government met with the College of

European Commissioners in Brussels – an event without precedent in recent

history. The strong pro-European Parliament position was confirmed when

Prime Minister Tusk addressed the chamber in July 2011. The legislature’s

president was a fellow Pole, Jerzy Buzek, a politician from the same party

as the Polish leader.

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński

Figure 1: Support for European integration in Poland 1999–2011

Source: Standard Eurobarometer 56–75.

The limits of ambitions

The Euro crisis

Positive constellations on the European sky for Poland were not, however,

the only ones on the cloudy European firmament. The biggest set of risks

for the Presidency was in the crisis in the Eurozone. It largely overshadowed

the Presidency since Poland has not introduced the Euro as its currency. The

Presidency was not at the centre of the public debate, and was not even

invited to the extraordinary summit of the heads of state or governments of

the Eurozone members of 21 July 2011. Surprisingly, there was a reference

to the Polish Presidency in this document. At first sight it reads as a reference

to an actor who should follow the summit’s conclusions: “Euro area mem-

bers will fully support the Polish Presidency in order to reach agreement

with the European Parliament on voting rules in the preventive arm of the

[Stability and Growth] Pact” (Council of the European Union 2011). How-

ever, another explanation is that this paragraph was illustrating not the Polish

irrelevance in the Eurozone debates, but a softening of the French position

on the so-called Sixpack. In the timely adoption of the Sixpack, France was

the main “troublemaker”, together with some Members of the European

Parliament. Paris as the main protagonist of closer political integration with-

in the Eurozone (without Poland) did not only delay the Sixpack but also

Chapter 2: Coping with multiple challenges

vetoed the participation of Poland’s Finance Minister in the Eurogroup

meetings. This explains Poland’s attempt at a greater focus on Paris since

mid-Presidency and in Poland’s Europe policy post-Presidency well into

2012.

As a consequence, Poland was not among the main actors addressing the

most important issues of the crisis. Its role, however, was as supportive as

possible. Warsaw has shown that being outside the Eurozone does not keep

it silent. For example, the Euro Plus Pact adopted earlier in 2011 was initially

considered a pact for the Eurozone states, and only at the Polish request in

February 2011 was the project opened up to the non-Eurozone countries. In

2011–2012 negotiations of the Fiscal Compact, the Polish team also advo-

cated openness of the document to non-Eurozone countries, tried to limit the

competence of the Eurozone summits and fought (unsuccessfully) for a seat

at the table during the Eurozone summits. Both cases illustrated the political

commitment of Warsaw to actively pursue inclusive solutions to the ongoing

and developing situations.

The Schengen debates

The political climate in Europe in 2011 was grim; hence there was a risk that

the Polish message of optimism was not being taken seriously. Next to the

difficult financial and economic situation, the future of the Schengen zone

was also at stake. The EU passport-free travel area of most of the EU nations

was to have been enlarged to include Bulgaria and Romania. While Poles

would in fact prefer to keep the zone untouched, other nations (i.e. France,

Italy and Denmark) had at times been aggressively pursuing revisionist pol-

icies in the first half of the year. Hence, the European debate was marked by

many controversies, and national popular or populist voices. The Presiden-

cy’s role (in chairing position, this time) was to maintain the Schengen rules

as untouched as possible. This was achieved thanks to timing rather than

active negotiations; in Denmark elections took place and since then the issue

had been largely dropped. In Italy and France the situation had somewhat

normalised. Malta continued to be in need of assistance, but this did not

require a changing of the rules.

Yet, the Schengen enlargement continued to cause problems. As hap-

pened with previous Presidencies, this issue put the Presidency on a collision

course with some other member states. Particularly difficult relations were

with the Netherlands, which vetoed the Schengen enlargement together with

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński

Finland in September 2011. The Finns have since removed their veto, but

the Dutch did not until the end of 2011. Polish–Dutch bilateral relations were

also challenged earlier in 2011 by unfortunate developments in the Nether-

lands – Polish migrants ridiculed by Dutch extremists – and The Hague

government’s limited political flexibility, as it was dependent on populist

parties’ support in the national parliament. Before the Presidency, relations

with Lithuania worsened over the situation of the Polish minority in the

country. Also, with the UK, the ties became strained mainly due to diverging

views on annual EU budgets, EU cohesion funds and the MAFF negotia-

tions. During the Presidency, cooperation with both the Lithuanians and the

British – on the future treaty revisions – improved significantly.

The parliamentary elections in Poland

The difficult pan-European climate was matched by domestic affairs. De-

spite strong domestic support for EU membership, there was no consensus

among political parties on how to run the EU Council Presidency. In recent

years, two main parties have dominated Polish politics: the liberal-conser-

vative Civic Platform (PO) of Donald Tusk (about 40% of support), which

is a member of the European People’s Party (EPP), and the conservative-

nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party of Jarosław Kaczyński (about 30%

of support), which is a member of the European Conservatives and Reform-

ers (ECR). Two smaller parties are the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) – a

social democratic party, which a decade ago had about 40% of support, but

in recent years has been largely marginalised to about 10% of public support,

and the Polish People’s Party (PSL) – an agrarian junior ruling coalition

party with about 8% of support, also a member of the EPP. The coalition

parties and SLD agreed that the government running the Council Presidency

should enjoy national support; hence, they refrained from public criticism

of the government over the Presidency. However, the main opposition party,

PiS, was critical of the government preparations before July 2011 and pre-

sented their own vision of the Presidency’s priorities.

The risks related to elections were prominent. Polish elections were

scheduled for 9 October 2011 and it was constitutionally impossible to post-

pone them until after the Presidency. The political parties considered holding

early elections in the spring of 2011, but the decision was never taken. The

electoral turbulence was minimised with the electoral results. The PO won

with 39.1% of public support, while the PiS result of 29.9% placed it as the

Chapter 2: Coping with multiple challenges

main opposition party. The new Sejm created a very comfortable situation

for the Prime Minister, whose party could choose with whom to form a new

government. The PO chose its previous partner, the PSL, and the new gov-

ernment was sworn in November 2011. Some of the Presidency-engaged

ministers changed, but not the Europe Minister, the Foreign Minister, the

Finance Minister or the Prime Minister. The electoral results brought to the

Sejm for the first time a new pro-European socio-liberal party, the Palikot

Movement, which was supported by 10% of the voters.

Apart from the risk of changing the government in the middle of the Pres-

idency, there were two other risks related to the elections. First, there was

the risk of domestic politicisation of the Presidency during the electoral

campaign. This materialised only partially when the PO issued a TV adver-

tisement arguing that only they had the best people in the country to secure

Polish interests in the European Union. Hence, a side-effect of this adver-

tisement might have been that the Council Presidency is organised for the

purpose of promoting national interests – as opposed to being the honest

broker.

The second elections-related risk refers to marginalising the Presidency-

related topics from the public debate in Poland. In fact, the campaign re-

placed the interest of the national media in the Presidency affairs. The focus

was on the domestic political campaign and, following the elections, on the

process of government formation. The news from the European Union was

as often about the Polish Presidency as about new crisis developments, the

Eurozone Summits or the European Councils. It can justifiably be argued

that the Presidency did not attract much attention either outside the country

or inside Poland.

The lack of European experience of Poland’s public administration

Another potential risk was linked to the obvious fact that this was the first

Council Presidency of Poland. There were no national experts in the public

administration who would know how to run it. Hence, all of the 1,200 per-

sons employed, to some extent – despite a long preparatory phase – had to

learn ‘on the job’. The ability to constantly readjust on an ongoing basis was

required. On the one hand, there is an old tradition of limited consensus-

seeking in the Polish public administration and a limited number of experi-

enced negotiators. On the other hand, there is a strong tradition of hierarch-

ical decision-making. All of these elements could potentially be detrimental

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński

for the Presidency: negotiating Presidency staff needed to remain as flexible

as possible as an honest broker; in order for them to succeed the level of

autonomy from their supervisors also needed to be high.

In principle, there are two ways of managing the Presidencies: from the

national capital or by the Permanent Representation in Brussels. Usually the

higher the degree of autonomy of the Permanent Representation, the higher

the degree of effectiveness of the Presidency. Yet, in the past the Presidencies

that were more political than administrative (i.e. those of larger member

states) were usually managed with tighter control from the national capital.

This limited their administrative effectiveness, but in exchange they may

have compensated with greater political effectiveness.

The French Presidency in 2008 ran a Presidency based in Paris, but as the

French national capital is only 1 hour 22 minutes away by train from Brussels

and the trains go every hour, during the French semester in 2008 Paris and

Brussels (French Permanent Representation) functionally (almost) merged.

The Poles were in a different situation and the relative trust between various

branches of the government – especially between the Warsaw-based min-

istries and the Polish Permanent Representation – was not fully tested ahead

of the Presidency.

The reason why the Permanent Representation needed more trust was

linked with the fact that these people were in direct ongoing contact with

their partners from fellow member states, the Commission and the Parlia-

ment. They usually had the best understanding of what compromises were

feasible and when, while pursuing the negotiations; delayed acceptance of

these agreements by supervisors in the national capital was occasionally

detrimental to the delicate process of consensus-seeking. Overall, however,

in the long preparatory phase the typical Polish public administration’s

shortcomings were mostly overcome. Two negotiations were successful: the

UN climate negotiations in Durban in December, where the Polish Presi-

dency was part of the negotiating team with the European Commission; and

the European patents negotiations, which substantially moved forward dur-

ing the second half of 2011.

Relations with Lisbon EU actors

The Polish cooperation with the two new actors created by the Lisbon Treaty

clearly indicated that there is a post-Lisbon model for the smooth running

of the rotating Presidency: the Prime Minister’s and the Foreign Minister’s

Chapter 2: Coping with multiple challenges

activities were supportive rather than competitive to that of Mr Van Rompuy

and Lady Ashton. The Polish Presidency has been a test for both of these

EU leaders, as the Polish ministers, Prime Minister Tusk and Foreign Mi-

nister Sikorski, did not choose to lower their profile. Quite to the contrary,

they chose to work in ‘tandem’ with their European counterparts. Their role

model was the following: not to challenge the EU leaders, but to strengthen

and motivate them to be more ambitious about what was possible. They have

been moderately successful – more in the area of foreign policy than within

the European Council, though.

Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, who on the one hand

were the two figures not chairing any of the Council formation, and on the

other hand were probably the most visible (alongside the Finance Minister,

and at a lower level the Europe Minister and the Permanent Representative)

as ‘Presidency faces’. In the pre-Treaty of Lisbon situation, Prime Minister

Tusk would have chaired the European Council and Foreign Minister Siko-

rski the foreign affairs body. Since they chose not to withdraw completely

and give space to the EU leaders, the pending question ahead of the Presi-

dency was how to organise their role in the Presidency. Clearly they pre-

ferred to have a visible role, which was important at least because of the

national elections. Their relationship with the formal leaders of both the

European Council and the Foreign Affairs Council became central.

The relations between Prime Minister Tusk and President Van Rompuy

were mostly smooth. The two leaders were known to be conciliators and

accommodating others’ perspectives. Hence, there was no real competition

between the two; Herman Van Rompuy’s main task was the situation in the

Eurozone, while Prime Minister Tusk focused on all other elements. One

situation, however, was important, and without a clear solution by the end

of the Presidency. Following the Dutch and Finnish veto over Schengen

enlargement to Romania and Bulgaria during the September 2011 JHA

Council, Prime Minister Tusk aimed at having the issue addressed at the

European Council. As the agenda of the European Council is set by its Pres-

ident, the two leaders met. The Poles tried to raise the issue of their concern

to the European Council. The outcome was only partially successful. The

issue was addressed during the November European Council, but there was

no agreement.

The relationship between Minister Sikorski and Lady Ashton remained

more challenging (see the contribution of Sus in this volume). The High

Representative did not enjoy good press as a foreign policy chief of the

European Union. Her position was weakened politically by member states

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński

and their foreign ministers, her agenda was driven by external events, and

her public administration (the European External Action Service) was still

under construction. In that specific situation, Minister Sikorski came into

the Presidency as one of the longest-serving ministers of foreign affairs in

the EU, as one of the most vocal ministers and as someone who does not

avoid responsibility to take the initiative. In the absence of effective Brus-

sels-led European foreign policy, there was a risk that he might have taken

the lead on some issues. Ahead of the Presidency, there was a pending ques-

tion if Minister Sikorski would or would not challenge the leadership of High

Representative Ashton. And if not, what sort of relationship would the two

enjoy? The Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Janos Martonyi replaced

the High Representative on 14 different occasions during international meet-

ings when she was not able to participate. Would the Pole follow the model

of his Hungarian and Belgian predecessors?

In reality, ahead of the Presidency, Radosław Sikorski publicly pledged

loyalty to Catherine Ashton, and did not undermine her position. They

agreed that he would represent the Union not only in official meetings, but

also on official trips. Minister Sikorski went on a policy trip to Afghanistan

and Pakistan in that capacity, and on another occasion also to Libya. On the

ground, he was accompanied by EU diplomats. Not challenging, but still

policy-defining, were the activities related to the establishment of the Euro-

pean Endowment for Democracy. For that purpose both leaders, Ashton and

Sikorski, wrote a letter in November to their partners asking for support.

Also, the Polish minister represented the High Representative in the Euro-

pean Parliament. In short, the Ashton–Sikorski cooperation was in fact more

fruitful than expected.

Conclusions

The Polish Government started the EU Council Presidency ambitiously and

with high expectations. Poland had been committed to the preparations for

the Presidency for a number of years and proved to have a dedicated political

and administrative leadership. A critical assessment, however, needs to in-

clude the double jeopardy situation of the Polish Council Presidency in 2011.

The first limitation was brought about by the Treaty of Lisbon and has ef-

fectively decapitated all the Presidencies politically. A while back, Swedish

diplomats were asking the question “what is the role of our Prime Minister?”

when it looked like the new treaty was to enter ahead of the Swedish term

Chapter 2: Coping with multiple challenges

in 2009. The Polish Government faced the situation in reality. The second

limitation was related to Poland being outside the Eurozone. None of the

non-Eurozone countries can execute the ECOFIN Presidency fully, least of

all at a time of profound crisis in the Eurozone. Taking these limitations on

board, the first-time Council Presidencies, after all, are ‘maturity tests’ for

countries of their presence in the European Union. The Polish Council Pres-

idency of 2011 was such a test for Poland and it passed it successfully.

References

Council of the European Union (2011) Statement by the Heads of State or Government

of the Euro Area and EU Institutions, Brussels, 21 July 2011, available at: http://

www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/123978.pdf.

Dowgielewicz, M. (2011) The Polish Presidency: A Mid-Term Assessment, lecture at

the Centre for European Policy Studies, 20 September 2011.

Sikorski, R. (2011) Poland and the future of the European Union, Speech at the German

Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, 28 November 2011, available at: http://

www.msz.gov.pl/resource/33ce6061-ec12-4da1-a145-01e2995c6302:JCR.

Tusk, D. (2011) Speech in the European Parliament, 6 July 2011, available at: http://

pl2011.eu/sites/default/files/users/shared/spotkania_i_wydarzenia/speech.pdf.

Wullschlager, J. (2011) Poles apart. Exhibitions highlight an exceptional generation of

Polish artists, ft.com, 24 June 2011, available at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/

2/831b4a52-9ce6-11e0-8678-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2DKSfQ6pd.

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński

Chapter 3: Playing the service provider, gaining in trust

Institutional aspects of the Polish Council Presidency

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

From an institutional perspective, the Polish Presidency of the Council pro-

vided an interesting test case for the functioning of the rotating chair. Firstly,

after the Spanish Presidency in the first half of 2010, which took place in an

intermediate period, it was the first time a large member state with high

political ambitions took over the chairing of the Council under the rules of

the Lisbon Treaty. Several of the major institutional shifts of the Lisbon

reforms had a great impact on the institutional environment for the member

states chairing the Council meetings. Whereas previously the Presidency

chaired all meetings from the European Council to the nine formations of

the Council of Ministers down to all Council Working Groups, Poland now

had to cooperate closely with the permanent chairs introduced by the Lisbon

Treaty: the permanent President of the European Council, the High Repre-

sentative chairing the Council for Foreign Affairs as well as the several

Council Working Groups on external issues chaired by the European Ex-

ternal Action Service (EEAS). Although this leaves large parts of the ad-

ministrative work in the Council to the Presidency, the political shift of these

reforms were already apparent in the previous Presidencies under the Lisbon

rules insofar as Belgium, but also Spain and Hungary, worked primarily in

the background as a service provider rather than an agenda-setter (Bunse,

Rittelmeyer and Van Hecke 2011). Unlike the previous Presidencies, how-

ever, Poland had enough time to both learn from their experiences under the

Lisbon rules and coordinate early on with the President of the European

Council Herman Van Rompuy and High Representative Catherine Ashton.

The second institutional challenge for Poland was connected to the defin-

ing political theme during its term at the helm of the Council – the European

debt crisis. Though Poland like the other accession countries is obliged to

eventually adopt the common currency, it does not take part in decision-

making structures of the Eurozone. Even as Council Presidency, it was

therefore excluded from the politically most important consultation fora, that

is the Eurogroup and the newly created Euro Summits (see the contribution

of Kaczyński in this volume). As a Pre-In to the common currency, one of

the main institutional interests of the Polish government was to get access

to the negotiations of the Euro countries via its role chairing the Council,

including in the formation of economic and finance ministers.

These challenges raise the questions in which way Poland institutionally

pursued its Council Presidency in the second half of 2012 – and which

precedents it established for other large EU member states under the Lisbon

rules. Did the Polish government follow in the footsteps of smaller members’

Presidencies by acting like a service provider, focusing on administrative

tasks, or did the Polish government pursue the strategy of agenda-setting, in

particular in areas of its own political interests? A special focus in this regard

will be put on the cooperation of the Polish Presidency with various other

institutional actors in the political system of the EU, in particular the Euro-

pean Council and its President, the European Parliament (EP) as well as the

High Representative and the EEAS. Finally, it is analysed how being a by-

stander to the Euro structures impacted the Polish government’s ability to

substantially influence EU politics during its time at the helm of the Council.

In conclusion, the analysis shows that even a large member state such as

Poland no longer has the institutional instruments for influencing high po-

litics as the Council chair, but that its successful fulfilment of the role of the

service provider and the smooth management both within the Council and

vis-à-vis the other EU institutions has greatly increased Poland’s image as

an important and constructive EU member state.

Organising the Council

Among the institutional roles and tasks prescribed to the rotating Presidency,

the management of the Council has changed the least in comparison with

the pre-Lisbon era. In addition, as other functions like the heading of the

European Council or external representation have been taken off the plate

of the Council Presidency, the importance of an effective and efficient or-

ganisation of the daily work of the Council has increased immensely. It is

also the task with the highest administrative challenges for the country at the

helm of the Council – in a Union of 27 member states, the Presidency has

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

to manage the negotiations in nine plus one Council formations1 as well as

a total of 132 Council Working Groups. The Presidency also has to coordi-

nate with a further 32 Council Working Groups (CWG) with permanent

chairs, most of which are active in the area of external relations (General

Secretariat of the Council 2012). The discussions here range from purely

technical exchanges in the CWG to the more political negotiations in the

Committee of Permanent Representatives up to the ministerial Council itself

(Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace 2006). The task of the Presidency in coordi-

nating this vast number of different fora is therefore mainly one of managing

negotiations, including setting the agenda of the different CWG and Council

formations, ensuring vertical and horizontal coherence between dossiers ne-

gotiated at different levels as well as tabling proposals for compromises after

bilateral and multilateral negotiations with the other member states (Thom-

son 2008).

Although largely invisible to the broader public, the importance of this

role of organising the Council can hardly be overstated for both the success

of a Presidency and the functioning of the EU as a whole. Of particular

importance and little visibility is this management in the CWG as previous

studies have shown that the majority of EU legislation is negotiated at the

lower levels with the ministers only engaging in the politically most con-

troversial areas (Häge 2008). It is therefore also the area where the Presi-

dency has to cooperate most closely with the General Secretariat of the

Council as well as the Commission and its previous presidencies in order to

organise the legislative calendar.

For this, the Polish administration started planning the organisation of its

Council Presidency four years before its start, namely in 2007. At first, it

consulted closely with the Commission over the general legislative plans for

the second half of 2011. As the Presidency drew closer, Poland presented

the priorities of its work programme to the member states in various CWG

as well as all ten Council formations in March to May 2010. Both Polish

officials and senior politicians also consulted extensively with the members

of the Trio Presidency and bilaterally with most of the 27 member states

(MFA 2012). The programme of the European Council and thus the Council

1 Since the Lisbon reforms, there are ten Council formations. As is well known, the

Council on Foreign Affairs is chaired by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs

and Security Policy. However, when issues of trade policy are discussed, the rotating

Presidency also takes over the chair for the Council on Foreign Affairs.

Chapter 3: Playing the service provider, gaining in trust

for General Affairs was closely coordinated with the Office of the President

of the European Council (see below).

On the one hand, this thorough preparation allowed the Polish Presidency

to plan ahead the legislative work in the CWG and the ministerial meetings

with great detail. However, on the other hand many Polish proposals and

initiatives that were regarded as not having enough support or not matching

with the legislative calendar of the EU were taken off the agenda long before

the Presidency started. Additionally, Poland also had to live with the usual

constraint that, in practice, most of the agenda items on the Council were set

by the general legislative and political programme, while the few additional

topics are usually dictated by external pressure rather than the Presidency

itself (Schout and Vanhoonacker 2006). This is also true for the organisation

of the Council by the Polish Presidency, where the major agenda items like

the Sixpack for economic governance, the budget for 2012, the multi-annual

framework, and the EU patent or cohesion policies were part of the general

legislative programme of the EU.

Looking at the performance of the Presidency in managing the Council,

it is hard to measure the effectiveness and efficiency (see the contribution

of Mehlhausen and Karolewski in this volume). However, the first and very

positive observation that can be made on the functioning of the Council

during the Polish Presidency is that no major hiccups or controversies on the

management of the Council have been raised. To the contrary, in public

comments the Presidency was perceived as a smooth manager of Council

affairs which managed the negotiations mostly as an honest broker (Ebels

2011). This is also reflected in the quantity of meetings organised by the

Polish Presidency, where the administration chaired about 1,940 CWG

meetings in Brussels as well as approximately 450 meetings and summits in

Poland, including 300 expert conferences (Niklewicz 2011a). Compared to

the four presidencies from 2010 to 2011, this work programme is at the

higher end of the spectrum, with the Danish Presidency in the first half of

2012 organising 1,480 meetings and the Belgium Presidency in the second

half of 2010 some 1,943 meetings.2 Finally, an indicator for the management

of the Council is the number of legislative acts adopted by the Council during

2 Own calculation based on official information from the individual presidencies.

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

the Presidency3 – as demonstrated in the following table, here the Polish

Presidency generally falls in line with previous presidencies, with a com-

parably high number of agreements on directives and Council decisions.

Table 1: Legislative acts adopted by the Council during the presidencies of

2010/2011.

Spanish

Presidency

(I/2010)

Belgian

Presidency

(II/2010)

Hungarian

Presidency

(I/2011)

Polish

Presidency

(II/2011)

Regulations 82 85 94 80

Directives 25 11 21 34

Decisions 137 196 165 191

Source: Own calculation based on official information from EUR-Lex.

Almost normal member of the European Council

The chairing of the European Council used to be the most visible and polit-

ically important task of the Council Presidency. It was here that almost all

roles of the Presidency came together and the decisions that shaped the his-

torical view of the success or failure of a Presidency were often taken. As

the body where the heads of state and government set the major guidelines

for EU internal and external policy, the chairing of the European Council

put an extra spotlight on the political leader of the country holding the Pres-

idency, who had to manage negotiations at the highest political level, me-

diate between member states and also have much more leeway to set the

agenda than within the regular legislative calendar in the Council (Schild

and Koopmann 2009). The Presidency also used to represent the EU exter-

nally at the highest political level in questions of foreign, security and de-

fence policy. Not least, the European Council meetings were also generally

used for media staging, where the Presidency could present the final result

of long-night negotiations as successes to its own national and the wider

European public (Kietz 2007).

3 The number of legislative acts adopted during a presidency is of course only a rough

indicator of its effectiveness in managing the Council, as the legislative output of the

Council can also be affected by several other factors such as current events and the

cooperation with the European Parliament (Ondarza 2012).

Chapter 3: Playing the service provider, gaining in trust

Of course, the Lisbon reforms have institutionally taken away this former

centrepiece of the Presidency by introducing a permanent President of the

European Council. Elected for two and a half years in late 2009, the first

President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, was well estab-

lished as crisis manager and mediator during the many special meetings fo-

cused on the European debt crisis over the course of 2010/2011 (Ondarza

2011). At the European Council itself, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk

sat at the table as a normal member representing Polish interests rather than

chairing or organising the debate in any way. However, the institutional and

political changes to the management and power structure of the European

Council are more profound for the rotating Presidency than just the transfer

of chairing the meetings of the heads of state and government would suggest.

In addition, the Polish Presidency was further hampered by the fact that as

a non-member of the Eurozone, it was an outsider to the major political issues

discussed at the European Council.

The degree of the changes for the Presidency can best be illustrated by

analysing the effect of the office of the Permanent President in general and

Van Rompuy’s working style in particular for the individual roles of the

Presidency. First, in procedural terms, the treaty leaves some room for the

management of the European Council to the rotating Presidency: both

Art. 15 (6) TEU and the rules of conduct for the European Council stipulate

that the meetings of the heads of state and governments are to be prepared

by its President in cooperation with the Commission and the Council for

General Affairs (GAC), which continues to be chaired by the rotating Pres-

idency. Hence, Poland chaired a total of seven meetings of the GAC, most

of which focused on either follow-up or preparation of European Council

meetings.4 However, the dates and the agenda of the European Council

meetings were organised by Van Rompuy and his team with the support of

the General Secretariat of the Council. For instance, Van Rompuy decided

against a special European Council meeting focused on foreign affairs

planned for September 20115 and also decided to convene a second meeting

of the European Council in October to allow for more negotiations on the

debt crisis and the economic governance of the EU (see below). In the run-

up to the crucial October summit, Van Rompuy even participated in the GAC

4 Own calculation based on official information from the Council.

5 Van Rompuy originally announced holding a yearly European Council dedicated to

foreign affairs in September 2010. The meeting in September 2011 was never offi-

cially cancelled, but rather quietly dropped.

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

on 22 October 2011 and thus took a personal stake even in the procedural

preparation of the European Council (European Council 2011c). Finally, the

detailed management of the European Council meeting itself was completely

assumed by Van Rompuy with no institutional role for the Polish Presidency.

Even more than in the management, this power shift is secondly reflected

in the agenda-setting of the European Council. When comparing the agenda

items discussed by the European Council in the second half of 2011 with the

priorities of the Polish Presidency, it becomes clear that there was mainly

incidental overlap. At its three meetings in October and December 2011, the

European Council mostly focused on issues of economic governance and

the debt crisis. But while economic growth was also part of the Presidency’s

programme, the main initiatives discussed by the heads of states and gov-

ernments such as the consensus on a banking package reached in October

(European Council 2011a), the institutional structure of the Eurozone and,

most importantly, the drive for treaty change that ended in the decision to

establish the Fiscal Compact outside of EU structures in December (Euro-

pean Council 2011b) all came either from Van Rompuy, the EU institutions

or other large member states such as Germany and France. On the other hand,

initiatives such as external energy brought forward by the Polish Presidency

were of minor political importance compared to the debt crisis. In practice,

they were included in the conclusions of the European Council, but only

discussed at the sidelines or not discussed at all (Van Rompuy 2011a).

Of equal political importance is that Van Rompuy also took full control

of the internal intermediation between the heads of state and government in

the European Council. The prerequisite for a successful European Council

used to be that the respective political leader of the country holding the

Presidency travelled to European capitals to have in-depth negotiations with

his or her counterparts, while also taking individual or groups of heads of

state and government to the negotiation table at the summits themselves to

work out a deal on the most controversial issues (De Schoutheete and Wal-

lace 2002). Building upon his established network, the permanent President

Van Rompuy now regularly consults with all of his colleagues in the Euro-

pean Council and thus conducts the pre-summit negotiations. At the meet-

ings themselves there was also no special role for Prime Minister Tusk to

engage in mediation: the central negotiations on the treaty change for tighter

fiscal rules as proposed by Germany and France and later vetoed by the

United Kingdom were conducted between the large member states them-

selves plus Van Rompuy, with Poland playing only a minor role at the side-

Chapter 3: Playing the service provider, gaining in trust

lines. In fact, major analyses of the summit mention neither the Polish Pres-

idency nor Prime Minister Tusk even once (Emmanouilidis 2011).

Fourthly, it is therefore not surprising that the media attention and there-

fore also the role of media staging has completely shifted away from the

rotating Presidency. When the deals on economic governance in October

2011 or the Fiscal Compact in December 2011 were presented after long-

night negotiations, it was Van Rompuy who explained the official deals to

the European and global media. Full media attention, however, focused

rather on the press conferences of the main protagonists of the negotiations,

i.e. the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas

Sarkozy as well as British Prime Minister David Cameron following the

British veto.

In short, if there was any more proof needed, the second half of 2011

supplied the final indicator that the political importance of the rotating Pres-

idency at the European Council is diminished to almost zero. Hampered by

its non-membership of the Eurozone in times when most political discus-

sions were focused on the debt crisis, even a large member state like Poland

could neither shape the agenda nor did it take intermediation from the per-

manent President. In all areas of the European Council, though largely in-

visible to the public, Van Rompuy has established himself as the manager,

agenda-setter and mediator. On the other hand, those member states with

great political stake and resources in the debates could bring in initiatives

and shape the outcomes of the discussion without the added role of the Pres-

idency. This includes Poland, who thus reduced to being a ‘normal’ member

of the European Council was also free to pursue its own national interests at

the summits rather than filling the role of an honest broker.

Negotiating with the European Parliament

One of the main tasks of the rotating Presidency representing the Council is

to negotiate EU legislation with the other legislative body, the European

Parliament. Building on the experiences of previous Presidencies who first

had to get used to the new self-confidence of the EP (Kietz and Ondarza

2010) – upgraded by the Lisbon Treaty as truly equal co-legislator to the

Council and illustrated by renaming and extending the co-decision procedure

as ‘ordinary legislative procedure’ – the Polish Presidency was well aware

that efficient cooperation with the EP was crucial for its success. In fact,

after Lisbon, the rotating Presidency was supposed to become “the main

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

interlocutor with the European Parliament on Council activities” (Missiroli

and Emmanouilidis 2009: 3) and – strengthened by the Lisbon Treaty in 41

activity areas6 – “will have to increasingly take into account the suscepti-

bilities of the parliament” (Vos 2011: 5).

Consequently, preparations as regards relations with the EP started al-

ready at the beginning of 2010. In addition to several meetings with EP

representatives, the Presidency drafted special instructions for ministers

concerning cooperation with the parliament and installed a network of liai-

son officers in all ministries on all EP-related issues. During the Presidency

53 pieces of legislation were signed and the Polish Prime Minister and Polish

ministers attended 34 debates of the EP during 12 sessions, two EP plenary

mini-sessions (MFA 2012) and 30 EP Committee meetings (MFA 2011a).

In that sense the Poles continued the close relationship the Belgians had

established (Bunse and Rittelmeyer and Van Hecke 2011: 59).

Though most of the negotiated EU legislation was already on the agenda

of the EU, the Polish Presidency was praised for its efforts to find compro-

mises with the EP in such important legislation as the Sixpack for economic

governance legislation (rules covering deficits, public debt, government ex-

penditure, macro-economic imbalances and related standards). Overcoming

French blockage delaying the package, the Polish Presidency negotiated a

compromise between the demands of the Parliament and the reservations in

the Council in mid-September so that the package could come into force by

13 December. For this, Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski participat-

ed three times in meetings of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee

(ECON) of the EP (4 July, 29 August, 20 December), which illustrates his

personal engagement especially as regards to ensuring a compromise on the

Sixpack legislation. To be fair, the successful outcome was also influenced

by the strong will of all actors to find a swift answer to some of the perceived

challenges in the Eurozone crisis. In the traditional review at the end of his

term, Rostowski was overwhelmingly congratulated by all ECON members

taking the floor for his professionalism, tone and the good working atmo-

sphere he created. This seems to stand exemplarily for the generally positive

way in which the Polish Presidency was perceived throughout the Parlia-

ment. An interesting criticism points to the way Council decisions are taken.

Though most issues under the ordinary legislative procedure require only

6 Especially as regards agriculture and fisheries, freedom, security and justice and the

common commercial policy.

Chapter 3: Playing the service provider, gaining in trust

qualified majority voting by the Council, the Polish Presidency, as others

before, continued searching for a compromise and was criticised for not

properly using the Lisbon rules.

More sensitive but also successfully managed by the Polish Presidency

was the decision on the 2012 budget (see the contribution of Kölling in this

Volume). Against the votes of the UK, Sweden and Denmark the Polish

Presidency was proud to have found an agreement with the EP (on a budget

of 147.2 billion euros liabilities and 129 billion euros payments) already in

the night to 19 November, thus for the first time under the Lisbon Treaty

within the time provided by law (MFA 2012). A more tricky exercise for the

Polish Presidency were the negotiations on the Multiannual Financial

Framework 2014–2020 (MFF). Normally in need to play an honest broker

role, Polish actors openly admitted their vital interests especially as regards

the payments from the cohesion funds (Dowgielewicz 2011). Consequently,

the Polish Presidency downgraded the expectations and labelled their con-

tribution as only about ‘clarifying issues’, giving the following Presidencies

the more difficult task of finding compromises on the main parameters and

concrete figures where Poland could again act as a normal Council member

and better lobby for its interests. The Polish Presidency report on the future

of EU cohesion policy for 2014–2020 of 16 December provides a good il-

lustration of that. Furthermore, the Polish representatives were also sceptical

as regards any major reform of the orientation of the EU budget since in their

view old mentalities prevailed. At the initiative of Mikołaj Dowgielewicz,

the Polish Presidency included selected MEPs in informal discussions of the

General Affairs Council on 28–29 July 2011 in Sopot, which was much

appreciated (Alvaro 2011). On 20 October 2011 in Brussels the Polish Pres-

idency also organised a conference on the MFF involving national parlia-

ments and the EP, which according to them could become a model for future

exercises rotating Presidencies could organise in order to bridge national and

European parliamentarians.7

Clearly, the Polish Presidency thereby showed a certain kind of style with

regard to the EP. This can be further illustrated by several ‘Meet the Presi-

7 The cooperation among national parliaments of the European Union was also chaired

by Poland in the second half of 2011. Within this dimension of the Presidency there

were 11 inter-parliamentary meetings of various parliamentary committees (including

COSAC, energy, finance, agriculture, defence CODACC and foreign affairs CO-

FACC). Among the standing topics covered (but unsolved) was the issue of involve-

ment of national parliaments in the pan-European debate on European foreign policy.

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

dency’ events in Strasbourg, which aimed to enable MEPs to ask questions

concerning current issues on the EU agenda to ministers of the Polish Pres-

idency. Four of these meetings, on the state of the union, the European En-

dowment of Democracy, ‘the road to Durban’ and ‘quo vadis Europa’, took

place. Furthermore, the Presidency organised several Presidency breakfast

meetings.

Another important compromise was reached with regard to the creation

of an EU patent. On 6 December 2011 the Polish Presidency concluded

negotiations on a political agreement after a Council compromise on the

seats of different branches of the EU Patent Court (London, Munich, Paris)

was reached. After the EP postponed its vote on the EU patent due to last-

minute changes from the UK important for the EP (European Parliament

2012), it took the two following Presidencies until December 2012 to find a

solution. Among other deals with the EP were the compromises on the

European Protection Orders in criminal cases, ‘correlation tables’, and inter-

institutional agreements on the EP’s participation in international confer-

ences and the forwarding and handling by the EP of classified information

held by the Council on matters other than those in the area of the Common

Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

In their overall review of the Polish Presidency almost all political groups

in the EP congratulated the Poles for their way of implementing their Pres-

idency tasks. Martin Schulz, then Chair of the Group of Socialists and

Democrats in the EP, even judged the Polish Presidency “one of the best

presidencies by far that I have experienced in these 15 six-month periods”

(Schulz 2011). Many MEPs described it as very professional. Only the

Greens and some members of the Group of Socialists and Democrats (S&D)

criticised the Poles for their climate policy approach, accusing it of retaining

as many carbon emission rights as possible (Ebels 2011). The fact that a

Pole, Jerzy Buzek, was President of the EP at this time as well as Poland’s

pro-European attitude, strongly highlighted by Tusk in his speech in the EP

at the beginning of the Presidency, further facilitated Poland’s good rela-

tionship with the EP. In general, what became clear is that the main activity

of a Presidency is now to negotiate legislation with the Council and the EP.

As a final note it was interestingly the Polish Prime Minister Tusk who

expressed feelings of disappointment, not about Poland’s job but about the

way the European Union had developed under its term: “Although we are

happy with the work done, I cannot say that Europe is more united now”

(quoted from Banks 2011). Similarly, Poland’s wish to achieve some eco-

nomic optimism in Europe or, using Dowgielewicz’s words, to “create a

Chapter 3: Playing the service provider, gaining in trust

better narrative about the European economy” (quoted from Mahony 2011)

did not come true. But that is something a rotating Presidency cannot achieve

by itself.

A partner for the High Representative and External Action Service

Like the position of the President of the European Council, the function of

the High Representative and its supporting European External Action Ser-

vice introduced by the Lisbon Treaty impacted heavily on the role of the

rotating Presidency. Indeed, since Ashton chairs the Foreign Affairs Council

(FAC) and takes part in the European Council meetings (which is no longer

the case for the foreign ministers), she defines the foreign policy agenda and

prepare drafts on external policy issues together with the foreign ministers

for the European Council. Having EEAS representatives chairing most FAC

working groups – all geographic ones, most horizontal ones and those of the

Common Security and Defence Policy –, Ashton and the EEAS define and

control the very important preparatory work of the principal foreign policy

decisions. On the other hand, the rotating Presidency continues to chair the

Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) in both its configu-

rations, the General Affairs Council, the FAC when it meets in trade con-

figuration and some horizontal working groups,8 the working groups for

trade and development and the COREPER preparatory working groups An-

tici, Mertens and Friends of the Presidency.9 It thereby defines part of the

foreign policy agenda and potentially has an overarching view, which links

foreign affairs to other EU policies (Schmidt 2011).

The Polish Presidency used its altered role to act as an (in comparison to

previous Presidencies even more) active partner of the High Representative

and Vice-President of the European Commission in EU external relations.

The Presidency was keen to prepare everything precisely in advance and

8 Working Party of Foreign Relations Counsellors (RELEX), Working Party on Ter-

rorism (International Aspects) (COTER), Working Party on the Application of Spe-

cific Measures to Combat Terrorism (COCOP), Working Party of Consular Affairs

(COCON), Working Party on Public International Law (COJUR) and Working Party

on the Law of the Sea (COMAR).

9 The Antici Group is the preparatory group for COREPER II, the Mertens Group is

the preparatory group for COREPER I, and the Friends of the Presidency Group is an

ad hoc body which the Presidency can activate to deal with a specific, often compli-

cated issue, for example by studying its multidisciplinary aspects.

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

thus drafted a common foreign policy agenda with Ashton, which was a

precedent (Dowgielewicz 2011).10 The partnership approach was visible

when the Polish Presidency represented Ashton in the neighbourhood, with

regard to democracy promotion, in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Central Asia

when they helped chair cooperation councils and represented Ashton at in-

ternational conferences. In a letter to the Polish Foreign Minister Radosław

Sikorski, Ashton highlighted the high quality of the Polish Presidency, in-

cluding the extraordinary commitment of Poland and Sikorski to actions

supporting the High Representative. At the same time this partnership ap-

proach coincided well with Polish interests, since Sikorski was keen to take

the lead on Eastern neighbourhood issues. Similarly, Poland regards its ap-

proach to its Eastern neighbourhood as a model for the EU in its relations

towards countries in its Southern neighbourhood (Mahony 2011). The fact

that Sikorski’s visit to Benghazi as first senior representative of the EU to

express support for the Temporary National Council, which was agreed with

Ashton, received a lot of public attention and was surely not to Sikorski’s

disappointment. Already in good tradition, Polish officials intervened on

behalf of the HR during an EP plenary session, and before the EP’s Foreign

Affairs Committee (see the contribution of Sus in this volume).

An illustration of how the practice Poland applied to easing the EEAS’s

(over)load was appreciated by the service is the fact that the succeeding

Danish Presidency was advised to do the same. The partnership approach

was especially important on the ground, thus with regard to the EU's external

representation to third countries and international organisations. Conse-

quently, the Polish Presidency provided support in areas with member state

competence such as consular affairs but in the case of staff shortages in EU

delegations also with more elaborated help. In the ten countries where the

European Union did not have a representative in the rank of ambassador at

the time, i.e. Cuba, Iran, Kuwait, New Zealand, North Korea, Qatar, Turk-

menistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Vatican, Poland repre-

sented the Union locally, and was responsible for all diplomatic activities

on behalf of the EEAS (MFA2012).

An important deal with regards to the institutional structure of EU foreign

affairs was reached by the Polish Presidency on the clarification of EU ex-

10 In comparison, Ashton for example did not share her foreign policy agenda with the

Belgian Presidency and the latter only wanted to play a minimalist role except for

Congo and the Great Lakes region, which the Belgians made sure to put on Ashton’s

radar (Bunse, Rittelmeyer and Van Hecke 2011: 57).

Chapter 3: Playing the service provider, gaining in trust

ternal representation at international organisations (Niklewicz 2011c). More

specifically, the discussion concerned the practices around the preparation

of EU positions and declarations in international organisations. The dispute,

which originated in differences in how treaty provisions were interpreted by

member states, the European Commission and the EEAS from the moment

the EEAS was established, was aggravated when UK Foreign Minister

Hague instructed his staff to look for competence creep in relation to the

EEAS with regard to all matters of shared competences in international or-

ganisations.11 The consequence was a blockage of over 70 EU statements to

UN Committees (Borger 2011) during September and October 2011 and

weakened the EU’s position in relation to external partners. The compromise

reached in the form of a Council document on “EU statements in multilateral

organizations. General Arrangements” provided explicit rules in which cases

the EU will apply the wording ‘on the authority of the EU’ and in which ‘on

the authority of the EU and member states’, and also established a procedure

for resolving any disputes on this issue. Between the end of October and

December 2011 more than 150 EU statements were delivered (Council of

the EU 2012). This compromise illustrates an interesting feature of the ro-

tating Presidency, which should not be underestimated. Since the EEAS is

still a very young institution – due to its sui generis position in the EU in-

stitutional system, with the hybrid function of the HR as Vice-President of

the Commission etc. – especially with the bigger member states the rotating

Presidency still plays an important role as mediator if – as in the case of

Poland – it enjoys more trust among member states (Dowgielewicz 2011).

Apart from some priority issues the Presidency could implement, such as

the Eastern Partnership Summit (see the contribution of Hahn-Fuhr and Lang

in this volume), most of the EU’s foreign policy agenda was already set.

Still, the Polish Presidency managed quite well to use it for promoting their

own interests as well. With regard to the Arab Spring the Polish Presidency

was the main initiator of the European Endowment for Democracy (EED),

11 Though the Lisbon Treaty entrusted the task of external representation to EU insti-

tutions, i.e. the President of the European Council, the High Representative, the

European Commission and EU delegations. It did not change the division of powers

between the EU and the member states in particular areas of EU activity, especially

with regard to so-called shared competences. The situation is complex due to the

variable status of the EU in the different international organisations where the EU is

either a full member equal to the member states or an observer, thus having various

speaking and voting rights.

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

a fund that is to be used to support civil society actors especially in countries

with few political freedoms. In comparison to other EU instruments such as

the European Instrument for Human Rights and Democracy, the EED, ac-

cording to Dowgielewicz, will bring added value since it will be fast, can

avoid asking governments, work via political foundations, and target blog-

gers, unrecognised civil society, free media, future leaders etc. In statements

during the Presidency, Poland was keen to stress that its experience of the

transition from communism to a pluralist, democratic European Union gave

it a particular desire to support democratic movements elsewhere (MFA

2011b). After a joint letter from Ashton and Sikorski asking their partners

for support, the Polish Presidency managed on 20 December 2011 to make

the member states agree on a Council declaration on the establishment of a

European Endowment for Democracy (Council of the European Union

2011).12

In EU defence cooperation Poland raised high expectations before its

Presidency (see the contribution of Sus in this volume). Seeing itself as the

only country with any military credibility to hold the Presidency since France

and the only one for quite some time into the future, Poland wanted to meet

the expectations (Dowgielewicz 2011) and restart the debate about the Bat-

tlegroups and a permanent military headquarters – especially in reaction to

the experience of the non-crisis management of the EU in Libya. Though

also defence falls to Ashton and the EEAS it was not among their priority

topics, allowing Poland to move ahead, which suited its national interests of

diversifying its security frameworks (Mahony 2011). At the end of the Pres-

idency, Poland could present a decision regarding the better use of existing

structures and the improvement of the capacity to plan CSDP operations and

missions at the strategic level, a declaration regarding the financing of all

the types of strategic inbound and outbound transport of the EU Battlegroups

from the Athena mechanism, and a decision that member states would carry

out 11 specific programmes as a part of the Pooling and Sharing Initiative

(MFA 2012). However, due to repeated opposition from the UK and not

enough interest from France to go ahead without Britain, an EU permanent

operation headquarters could not be reached. Similarly, there was neither

much appetite among Poland’s EU partners as regards discussing concrete

12 Only in June 2012 was the final decision taken to create the EED. Polish Foreign

Minister Sikorski was optimistic about choosing a seat for its headquarters, appoint-

ing staff and proposing its first programmes “by the end of the year”. Cf. Nielsen

2012; Richter and Leininger 2012.

Chapter 3: Playing the service provider, gaining in trust

implications of the Lisbon Treaty’s solidarity clause and defence coopera-

tion with the EU’s Eastern neighbours nor a breakthrough between Cyprus

and Turkey that would have allowed for improved NATO–EU cooperation.

The performance of Poland in this policy area more than anywhere else il-

lustrates the limitations of a rotating Presidency when there is no political

will of member states to move forward. Still, in the difficult circumstances

Poland achieved more than could have been expected.

In short, whereas the rotating Presidency lost a lot of its functions, espe-

cially management and agenda-setting, to High Representative Ashton and

the EEAS, it still has an important role to play in supporting Ashton with

her overburdened tasks in EU foreign, defence and development policy. Es-

pecially as long as the EU member states still seem to have more trust in

another EU member state than towards the still young EEAS, the Presidency

continues to be important for mediation exercises. Here, a bigger member

state such as Poland could use its foreign policy experience and clout to fulfil

that role in an active way. In such a supporting role one could argue that

Poland could also better pursue its own national interests and pool energy

into those areas that it deems as important, further strengthened by the fact

that it became an ordinary member of the FAC. The personal relationship

between Ashton and Sikorski can also be judged “more fruitful than expect-

ed” (Kaczyński 2011). Poland thus showed a useful potential role for future

foreign ministers playing an active supporting role to Ashton in her difficult

endeavour to form a European foreign policy.

Bystander to the Euro structures

The most important institutional innovation decided upon during the Polish

Presidency is one that was largely out of reach of the influence of the Polish

government and contrary to its declared interest – the further emancipation

of the Euro structures.

Already at the beginning of its Presidency, Poland found itself in a diffi-

cult position: next to the UK, which has a permanent opt-out from the com-

mon currency, Poland is the largest EU member state not part of the Euro-

zone. Bound by its accession treaty, it is also required to eventually join the

common currency when it meets the Euro convergence criteria, which the

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

Polish government does not foresee doing before 2017.13 As Poland is both

directly affected by the economic downturn in the Eurozone and will even-

tually have to subscribe to the new evolving economic governance system

among Euro members, the Polish government has a strong interest in taking

part in the decisions that are shaping the future structure of the Eurozone

(Gebert 2012).

The Polish government therefore strived to use the rotating Presidency to

become at least a participant in the negotiations on the future of the Euro-

zone, albeit with little success. This first concerns the role of the Presidency

in the Eurogroup. The Eurogroup is the forum where the economic and fi-

nance ministers of the Eurozone negotiate on all Euro-related issues while

the EU member states outside of the common currency are excluded. In

addition, the Eurogroup has its own permanent President, which was then

the Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker. Within the EU sys-

tem, the Eurogroup has a hybrid role – although formalised with the Treaty

of Lisbon,14 it cannot formally take decisions, as these have to be adopted

by the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN), where then only

the Euro member states have a vote. In practice, however, the Eurogroup has

taken on a most important role before and during the debt crises to give the

Euro member states a closed negotiation forum (Puetter 2012). For instance,

the Euro member states regularly negotiated deals on the rescue packages

for Greece, Ireland, Portugal or Spain deep into the night, which were then

adopted without real discussion at the ECOFIN the next day.

Being excluded from this forum, Tusk suggested at the start of the Polish

Presidency that the Polish finance minister should take part in the Eurogroup

in order to function as a bridge to the non-Euro member states (Rettman

2011). Although presented as a European initiative, this proposal was mainly

in the national interest of Poland as the government wanted to use the Pres-

idency as a way into the Eurogroup. This proposal was not very well received

among Euro member states, with in particular France resisting the idea as it

13 In addition, due to the disastrous effect of the debt crisis on the public image of the

Euro, public support in Poland for joining the common currency has recently fallen

as low as 12 per cent. While the debt crisis is ongoing, the Polish government has

also decided to adopt a wait-and-see approach towards joining the Euro (Sobczyk

2012).

14 Before the Treaty of Lisbon, the Eurogroup was a purely informal, though already

powerful body to coordinate Eurozone issues before they were being voted formally

in the ECOFIN.

Chapter 3: Playing the service provider, gaining in trust

was regarded as a precedent for other non-Euro states, in particular the Unit-

ed Kingdom, to force their way into the Eurogroup. After getting mixed

signals, the Polish government therefore decided to abandon this initiative

and had to remain outside of the Eurogroup (van Puyvelde 2011).

Even more problematic for Poland was the development during the debt

crisis of separate summits for the heads of state and government of the Eu-

rozone countries (Euro Summits). Although functionally necessary for the

management of the debt crisis, these summits gave the Euro countries a

forum at the highest political level where deals were negotiated on the future

of the common currency, again without even the participation of non-Euro

member states (Schwarzer 2012). Additionally, the Polish government per-

ceived a rising danger of these summits to negotiate package deals that also

extended to policy areas connected, but not isolated to, the common currency

with distinct Polish interests such as the EU budget or cohesion policy.

Viewed from this Polish angle, in this regard the Presidency started off

in a hardly satisfactory manner. Only a few weeks into the second half of

2011, under the pressure of financial market actors, Van Rompuy called an

‘informal’ meeting of the heads of state and governments of the Eurozone

in order to discuss the situation in Greece, negotiate an increase in the size

of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and to finalise the terms

of the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Prepared by the

Eurogroup, Poland and the other non-Euro EU member states were not in-

vited and stood at the sidelines as the Euro-17 wrangled over the economic

future of the Euro. As agreement was found on all three accords, the Polish

Presidency could do little more than to welcome the decisions the next day

(Niklewicz 2011b).

Thus twice excluded from the major decision-making table early on in its

Presidency, Poland sought hard to secure a general inclusion of non-Euro

member states at the increasingly important Euro structures. In this, it won

a short-term victory and suffered a long-term defeat, both at the same time,

at the double summit on 23 and 26 October 2011.

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

Table 2: European Council and Euro Summit meetings during the Polish

Presidency

Date Type

21 July 2011 Euro Summit

23 October 2011 European Council

23 October 2011 Euro Summit

26 October 2011 Euro Summit

26 October 2011 Informal European Council

8 December Euro Summit

8/9 December European Council

Source: Own compilation based on official information from the EU.

The success is connected to the hectic succession of summits during the debt

crisis: as the October meeting of the European Council and the additionally

planned Euro Summit approached, it became clear that the plethora of dif-

ficult, interconnected issues were very hard to resolve in one meeting. At

first, the European Council and Euro Summit were postponed for one week

by Herman Van Rompuy (Van Rompuy 2011b), who then suggested an ad-

ditional second Euro Summit two days after the European Council to work

out some final details on the stabilisation and adjustment programmes for

several Euro member states (see table 2). Led by Poland, Sweden and the

UK, the non-Euro member states were however successful in insisting they

attend the second Euro Summit in order to at least be partially involved in

the decision-making. Van Rompuy was thus forced to call an informal meet-

ing of the European Council for 26 October where, in effect, the heads of

state and government came to Brussels for a short meeting before the real

negotiations took place among the Euro-17 (Phillips 2011). This short-term

success was pushed through by the joint vetoing power of the three largest

non-Euro member states and thus had little to do with the fact that Poland

held the Presidency at the time.

At this double Euro Summit in October, the Euro-17 decided upon a new

institutional structure for the governance of the Economic and Monetary

Union, realising most Polish fears of being excluded from an inner core: to

facilitate closer coordination, the Euro member states decided to institution-

alise the Euro Summits on a regular basis, which are to be held at least twice

a year, and get their own permanent President. Herman Van Rompuy was

named as the first President of the Euro Summits, thus giving him a double

Chapter 3: Playing the service provider, gaining in trust

hat. Furthermore, in the future the chair of the Euro Summits is to be des-

ignated at the same time as the President of the European Council, thus ef-

fectively not only creating a new double-hatted position, but also ensuring

that only candidates from Euro member states are eligible for the post of

permanent President of the European Council. Additionally, Euro member

states decided to bolster the Eurogroup by creating their own working group

to prepare for Eurogroup meetings that is separate from the general Council

working groups (Heads of State and Government of the Eurozone 2011).

Regarding the non-Euro member states, the new President of the Euro

Summits is committed to ensure that they are informed of the decisions of

the Euro Summits, but they did not get a right to participate at the meetings

at any of the now three levels of the Euro governance structure themselves.

This last decision was later remedied during the negotiations on the details

of the Fiscal Compact, so in the first half of 2012 and thus after the end of

the Polish Presidency. In these negotiations Poland and Sweden pushed

through that non-Euro member states would be regularly invited to take part

in parts of the Euro Summits that directly affected them or the general nature

of the Euro system. All in all, however, it was during the Polish Presidency

that the Euro member states made the most distinct steps towards a separate

governance structure exclusive to the Euro-17.

Conclusions

When finally evaluating Poland’s relations as Council President to the other

European institutions, one can make three observations. First, Poland – like

other ‘Lisbon’ Presidencies before – also mainly acted as a service provider

and fulfilled its management tasks. Thereby the Polish Presidency confirmed

the adapted role of the rotating Presidency under Lisbon rules that is mainly

responsible for guaranteeing the smooth running of the EU’s legislative and

administrative processes. Although publicly largely invisible, this role in

paving the way for compromises between 27 EU member states, the EP and

various interest groups cannot be overstated. In that role Poland supported

the preparation and follow-up of the European Council and the different

Council configurations as well as mediated between the Council and the EP

in legislative matters and between the different member states in internal

Council matters. Important examples include the agreement on the Sixpack

legislation, the budget for 2012 and the compromise on general arrangements

when issuing EU statements in multilateral fora.

Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

Second, a big member state like Poland demonstrated that it can provide

a very useful job facilitating the High Representative’s difficult task of pur-

suing a consistent, efficient and visible European foreign policy. While also

mainly acting like a service provider to Ashton and the EEAS, Poland could

from time to time set an agenda that fitted its national interests, such as with

regard to the establishment of the European Endowment for Democracy, the

Eastern Partnership or CSDP. That attitude, while in continuous partnership

with the High Representative, could indeed set a useful precedent for future

larger EU member states under Lisbon rules, since the overburdened work-

load of Ashton and the EEAS will persist.

Third, Poland did not suffer at all from any domestic challenges affecting

its Council Presidency. Neither the national elections in October 2011 nor

the difficult economic situation in the Eurozone impacted on the efficient

running of the Polish Presidency (see the contribution of Kaczyński in this

volume). Quite on the contrary, Poland could be self-confident and tenta-

tively used its increased influence also due to its comparably positive eco-

nomic situation at home. This will be different for each following Presiden-

cy.

At the same time it became evident that the rotating Presidency has to live

with a lot more constraints than before, especially having lost the agenda-

setting power in the European Council and the Foreign Affairs Council.

Whereas the little public and media attention to the Polish Presidency re-

mains a common feature of rotating Presidencies also under Lisbon rules,

the main constraint for Poland during its Presidency was not being a member

of the Eurozone. When a larger member state in the future impacts on Euro-

pean agenda-setting it will not be because of its role as rotating President

but because it is a large economy in the Eurozone. On the other hand, Poland

greatly improved its reputation inside the EU, i.e. among European institu-

tions and member state partners. Another benefit of rotating Presidencies

after Lisbon could be perceived in the fact that it can sometimes act as an

ordinary member state in the European Council and Foreign Affairs Council

and does not have to play the broker role.

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Anne Lauenroth and Nicolai von Ondarza

Chapter 4: Ambitious realism

The Eastern Partnership as a top priority of the Polish EU

Presidency

Irene Hahn-Fuhr and Kai-Olaf Lang

Already long before the takeover of the Presidency of the Council by Poland,

it seemed clear that the development of the cooperative relations of the

European Union with its Eastern neighbours was to be a focal point of the

Polish Presidency. Poland had established itself as the advocate of Ukraine

and other Eastern European states already before its own entry into the EU,

and since its membership is one of the Union countries pushing for the es-

tablishment of an effective neighbourhood policy and the active support of

the reform processes on the far side of the Eastern periphery of the extended

Union. This resulted from the superordinate strategic relevance that Poland

attaches to its relations with its Eastern partners, above all Ukraine: their

westernisation and pre-accession to the EU is seen in the long term as a

guarantee for the preservation of geopolitical plurality east of Poland and

thus as effective reinsurance against Russia’s neo-imperial tendencies in the

post-soviet region. Moreover, the intensification of the cooperation with the

immediate Eastern neighbours is intended to reduce the economic and social

differences along the current outer EU border, which is also Poland’s Eastern

border.

The difficult relationship with Russia has long been a handicap for

Poland’s Eastern policy plans, as important partners of Poland perceive its

commitment to Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe and the South

Caucasus as a complicating factor in relations between the EU and Russia.

For Moscow, the attempts at an EU-isation and NATO-isation of countries

like Ukraine represent an intrusion into a field of particular personal interest.

The spat with Russia reached a culmination with the Orange Revolution in

Ukraine in 2004 as well as the electoral success of the Russia-sceptical

Kaczyński twins. Since the election of Donald Tusk in 2007, a pragmatic

Polish–Russian rapprochement has been instituted and Poland’s relationship

with Russia has changed: for traditional Russia-oriented member states,

above all Germany, Poland was suddenly an asset in the search for con-

structive dealings with Russia. As a result, the willingness to accept and even

support Poland’s advocacy of Ukraine and other states to the east of the EU’s

border is greater. This is also the case for Germany, which also sought an

upward revaluation of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and its

Eastern flank in the form of a new Eastern policy and an ‘ENP plus’. Poland’s

new Russia policy and its active European policy as a whole eased German–

Polish contact with regards to the Eastern neighbours and led to an active

cooperation between the two countries, reflected for example in joint trips

and forays by the respective foreign ministers. In the form of the Eastern

Partnership initiative mooted in spring 2008 together with Sweden and of-

ficially launched by the EU the following year, Poland definitively de-

veloped into one of the primary designers in the formation of the cooperation

prototype of the EU with its Eastern partners (MFA 2008).

The deepening of the relationship with the countries of Eastern Europe

and the South Caucasus as well as the strengthening of the Eastern Partner-

ship was therefore so to speak a natural priority for the Polish Presidency.

Partner countries and member states assumed that Poland would use its

Presidency as a driver of the Eastern components of the neighbourhood pol-

icy. Already with its first deliberations on the direction of the Presidency,

Warsaw took these expectations as a basis and reckoned on a substantial

acceptance of its activities (see Niemczycki 2009: 108).

This article is structured as follows. We will first outline the Eastern Part-

nership in the context of the priorities of the Polish Presidency and then

describe the concrete targets that Poland wanted to achieve for the deepening

of the Eastern Partnership. Subsequently, the main challenges and limita-

tions that would hamper Warsaw’s implementation of its priorities will be

thematised. After sketching the balance of the Presidency’s activities we will

finally assess the Presidency’s neighbourhood policy with regards to the

Eastern Partnership.

The Eastern Partnership as a pivotal objective of the Presidency

It is not surprising that the diplomats and politicians responsible for the

preparations of the Presidency named the Eastern Partnership as one of the

Irene Hahn-Fuhr and Kai-Olaf Lang

goals of the Presidency at an early stage already.1 The six ‘preliminary pri-

orities’ agreed by the Polish government in July 2010 also included the theme

‘Eastern Policy’ and named the completion of association agreements, the

creation of free-trade zones with the EU, trade and visa liberalisation as well

as the expansion of economic contacts as concrete objectives in the context

of the Eastern Partnership (Chancellery of the Prime Minister 2010). In the

course of the further concretisation of the Presidency programme, a re-

grouping and differentiation of the priority fields into ‘strategic’ and ‘oper-

ational’ parts followed (following the pattern of numerous other Presiden-

cies). While the case of the expansion of economic contacts was addressed

by the practical experience of the respective sectoral policies, broad spheres

of action – European integration as a source of growth, secure Europe as

well as Europe benefitting from its openness – were set for the other three

objectives. The latter also encompassed alongside Eastern Partnership the

theme of EU expansion (see the contribution of Węc in this volume).

These three main themes were confirmed in the framework of the ultimate

definition of the Presidency programme, but supplemented by important in-

dividual aspects. In the ‘openness’ category, relations with the Southern

neighbours of the EU as well as questions concerning trade policy were

incorporated (MFA 2012: 156 ff). Moreover, the official six-month pro-

gramme included a passage on the EU cooperation with Russia. In multiple

sectoral passages of the operative programme, specific objectives for coop-

eration with the Eastern neighbours were also to be found (MFA 2011a).

Through the widening of the priority cluster ‘openness’ as well as through

the inclusion in the context of specific policy, Poland’s commitment to the

Eastern dimension of the EU neighbourhood was packaged with other topics;

in this way, Warsaw wanted at the level of the Presidency programme to

confront the possible suspicion of an excessive advocacy of the Eastern

Partnership at the expense of other policy fields. Nevertheless, it was clear

in the set of priorities that the cooperation with the Eastern neighbours of

the EU had a particular meaning, a matter close to the heart of the Presidency.

The relevance of the Eastern Partnership had already been shown in the

preparations for the Presidency – both in the internal coordination between

1 For example during the first session of the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish par-

liament, at which the Government Plenipotentiary for the Presidency, Foreign Sec-

retary Mikołaj Dowgielewicz, described the state of preparations (Dowgielewicz

2008).

Chapter 4: Ambitious realism

and within Polish departments and their task definitions2 as well as in dia-

logue with ‘Brussels’, in particular with the Commission, the Council Sec-

retariat and the President of the European Council.3 Polish diplomats in the

countries of the Eastern Partnership were among the diplomatic missions

that received additional resources in view of the Presidency (MFA 2012:

75).

Keeping a high profile: visibility, bilateral linkage and multilateral

cooperation

Poland’s ultimate objective was the strengthening of the Eastern Partnership,

which the country had after all jointly launched, and developing it by en-

hancing its content. Since the beginning of the neighbourhood policy and

the initiation of the Eastern Partnership, Warsaw had the – not entirely un-

justified – feeling that the cooperation with the direct neighbours across the

EU’s Eastern border was not properly progressing and was being depriori-

tised or even repressed by influential member states. Foreign Secretary

Dowgielewicz described already at the beginning of 2010 the “maintaining

of a political momentum” as the greatest task for Poland, as the European

Union could not easily return to this topic after a long stagnation in Eastern

policy when it is Poland’s turn at the Presidency (Euractiv 2010). The neg-

ative developments in the partner countries as well as in the Arabic world

resulted however in the downturn of the Eastern Partnership feared by

Dowgielewicz. In Polish expert circles isolated voices were already talking

about the need for a relaunch of the Eastern Partnership. At such discussions

on a renewed reconstruction of the conceptual framework for the Eastern

partners (and the connected bureaucratic-politic implications), the Polish

government had as little interest as it did for a further slackening of the

2 At the four preparation meetings with representatives from the cabinet of the President

of the European Council, the Eastern Partnership was one of the few themes discussed

(MFA 2012: 43).

3 For example, Foreign Minister Sikorski pointed out at the beginning of the Presidency

that the Foreign Ministry had, beyond the coordination tasks, four concrete goals, of

which three concerned the Eastern Partnership: the conducting of a summit meeting

on this topic, the successful conclusion of the negotiations about the association

agreement of the EU with Ukraine as well as the creation of a European democracy

fund. The fourth priority was the conclusion of the accession negotiations with Croatia

(Sikorski 2011a: 37).

Irene Hahn-Fuhr and Kai-Olaf Lang

cooperative relations. This being the case, Warsaw concentrated on consol-

idating and carefully expanding the Eastern Partnership in its existing form.

A better visibility, the strengthening of the bilateral ‘struts’ as well as the

expansion of the multilateral cooperation fields and levels were apparently

the three main areas of action from which individual goals and concrete steps

could be derived (cp. MFA 2011a).

An essential vehicle for an increased visibility of the Eastern Partnership

was the second summit of the state and government heads of EU and Eastern

neighbours. This was according to the schedule supposed to have taken place

in May 2011 during the Hungarian Presidency of the European Council al-

ready but was – according to the official statement – postponed due to clashes

with other major international events until September 2012 and thus took

place during the Polish Presidency. With the organisation of the summit

meeting, Poland was unexpectedly given an event of the highest level that

reduced Warsaw’s concerns about insufficient awareness of its Eastern pol-

icy activities.

On the bilateral level (bilateral linkage) Warsaw’s primary aim was

progress in the negotiations on new contractual relations in the form of as-

sociation agreements. Agreement with Ukraine was to be finalised – this had

made the most headway among all partner countries and after concluding

the difficult Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) in

the framework of the association the whole negotiation package was to be

put together. In the case of Moldova and Georgia the aim was the opening

of negotiations on the free trade agreement.

With a view to the multilateral level (multilateral cooperation) of the

Eastern Partnership, Warsaw attempted to strengthen the sectoral coopera-

tion. Policy fields such as commerce and agriculture as well as security and

defence policies were to be enabled. Moreover, it was planned to further

strengthen the civil-society components of the Eastern Partnership beyond

the government-centred cooperation of the classic neighbourhood policy.

An EU-financed European Endowment for Democracy (EED) for the pro-

motion of pluralism, rule of law and democracy in the neighbouring states

was to be founded for this purpose.

An old concern of Poland that was also reflected in the Presidency goals

was the call for visa-free travel and thus at least a long-term acknowledge-

ment by the EU for the abolition of the visa requirement. Poland accordingly

underlined the goal of effectively implementing the existing EU action plans

with Ukraine and Moldova in order to allow at least for these two countries

enhanced mobility and direct interpersonal contacts.

Chapter 4: Ambitious realism

Coping with adverse background conditions

In the field of the Eastern Partnership, the Polish Council Presidency was

particularly exposed to the problems of high expectations and a modest scope

for design. Poland’s pro-European government and its efficient administra-

tion raised hopes that an ambitious programme of institutional realignment

after the Lisbon Treaty could be proactively forged. After all, Poland had

with regards to the Eastern Partnership a special expertise, successes and

very good contacts with the partner countries. But already in the run-up to

the Presidency, it became clear that Poland’s endeavours were to take place

in a difficult setting. Poland therefore followed also in the cooperative rela-

tions with the Eastern neighbours a policy of ambitious realism: although it

wanted to noticeably advance the policy field, it was conscious of the man-

ifold difficulties of this desire. The fact that the overriding topic of European

politics since 2008 – the financial, banking and debt crisis in the Eurozone

– also interfered in the Eastern Partnership was by some margin not the

biggest constraint.

Four large limitations in particular noticeably reduced the momentum and

opportunities for influence of the Polish negotiating. Firstly, the Lisbon

Treaty largely deprived the rotating Presidencies of the responsibilities in

the field of external politics (see the contribution of Sus in this volume).

Above all the powers passed over to the High Representative of the Union

for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR) – in particular her chairmanship

of the new Foreign Affairs Council – and the formation of the European

External Action Service (EEAS) resulted in a qualitatively new situation (see

the contribution of Lauenroth and von Ondarza in this volume). This was a

particular challenge, as Warsaw was pursuing ambitious goals precisely in

the field of foreign affairs – in contrast for example to Belgium, which as

the first country under the Lisbon Treaty system wanted, according to the

Belgian EU ambassador Mike Beke, to ensure that it “no longer has anything

to do with external relations by the end of the term” (Beke 2011).

How did Poland circumvent this restriction? Warsaw was aware that the

Lisbon system in the field of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)

had scope for design for the chair (see Szabo 2011: 4; Vanhoonacker et al.

2012). These opportunities were to be used through various strategies. One

strategy was to continually search for close contact to the HR and EEAS,

thus increasing the acceptance of Poland’s plans. This “cooperative model

of working together” (MFA 2012: 179) aimed at showing the HR and EEAS

which mutual advantages result from an active engagement in the Presidency

Irene Hahn-Fuhr and Kai-Olaf Lang

diplomacy. In this way also the Polish priorities would be considered in the

definition of the foreign affairs agenda of the EU (ibid.). In practice the

representation of the HR through the Polish Foreign Minister with respect

to third-party states (such as Afghanistan or Pakistan) or international orga-

nisations played a particularly important role. A second strategy was to play

off informal contacts and to use informal fora. The most important building

block in this approach was the Gymnich meeting of EU foreign ministers at

the beginning of September in Sopot, where the second day was devoted to

the Eastern Partnership and in particular the situation in Ukraine.4 Thirdly,

Poland positioned some of its Eastern policy goals in the Council formations

that it continued to chair. This included the external relations of various

policy areas such as commerce, agriculture, or justice and home affairs.

The second significant limitation that Poland had to grapple with were

the social and political upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East. Al-

though Warsaw’s government representatives ensured that the Eastern Part-

nership would not be put at a disadvantage in light of the Arab Spring (Gazeta

Prawna 2011a), in Poland there was the general impression that the EU for-

eign policy in the second half of 2011 (and beyond) would primarily have

to deal with the opportunities and risks along its Southern periphery and

therefore unavoidably turn its back on its Eastern flank. Such fears were also

fuelled by an increased lobbying of Southern European member states for

more efforts by the EU in the Mediterranean region, for a stronger weighting

of the European Neighbourhood Policy South group as well as for a massive

increase in financial resources for the Southern section of the neighbourhood

policy. The letter to the HR from the six Mediterranean member states of

Spain, France, Malta, Slovenia, Greece and Cyprus in February 2011 em-

phasised these points and was seen in Warsaw as the beginning of a veritable

offensive by the Southern states of the EU (Ananicz 2011). While voices in

the media were loud that Poland’s government could for this reason not

overly resolutely advocate the Eastern Partnership (Pawlicki 2011), political

Warsaw reacted less through a shutting down of its Eastern negotiation

components than through the revaluation of the Southern orientation. Pres-

ence and active engagement of the Polish Presidency was apparently to en-

4 The HR chaired the meeting, Foreign Minister Sikorski was however co-host. Sikorski

suggested in the context of the Sopot meeting that there should be an additional Gym-

nich meeting of the foreign ministers each year, and stated that Poland would be

prepared – together with ‘strategic partners’ of the EU – to organise it. This suggestion

was however not implemented (see PAP 2011a).

Chapter 4: Ambitious realism

sure the support of the partners who were particularly interested in the coun-

tries to the South. Before and during the Presidency activities took place in

this respect, such as the visit of Foreign Minister Sikorski to the rebel-con-

trolled Libyan city of Bengasi in May (the first visit by a western statesman),

Ex-President Wałęsa’s visit to Tunisia or the initiative for the transfer of

‘experiences of transformation’ undertaken by Polish government agencies

and NGOs (Jones and Baczyński 2011).

The third limitation for Poland’s Eastern policy Presidency goals was the

stagnating or even worsening situation in the countries of the Eastern Part-

nership. In Belarus the suppression of the opposition by the Lukashenko

regime increased significantly after the bogus presidential election of De-

cember 2010, so that the policy of a careful partial inclusion of the country

in the European Neighbourhood Policy made way for the discussion and

implementation of new sanctions. In Ukraine democratic standards had been

further damaged since the taking over of the presidential office by Viktor

Yanukovych in February 2010. Imprisonment, court proceedings and the

treatment of the previous Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko meant that re-

lationships with the EU worsened noticeably over the course of 2011. The

most important and, in talks about an association agreement with the EU,

the most advanced country of the Eastern Partnership had changed from a

model country to a problem case. There were also concerns about other

partner countries, in particular about their inner ability to reform as well as

the adherence to the minimum criteria in the fields of rule of law, democracy,

media freedom and the protection of minorities.

Fourthly, the Polish Presidency could ultimately offer little new in the

conceptual and programmatic development of the Eastern Partnership, as

the HR and Commissioner Štefan Füle, who was responsible for the neigh-

bourhood policy, presented in the spring a policy document on the strategic

alignment of the European Neighbourhood Policy that wanted above all to

react to the recent developments in the Arabic world (European Commission

2011). This ‘review’ of the ENP did not dramatically narrow the creative

leeway in terms of content, as it did not advocate a complete reorganisation

of the neighbourhood cooperation framework. Poland had also tried early

on to feed content into the discussion on the document (MFA 2010).

The ‘review’ nonetheless defined – before the Polish Presidency and be-

fore the summit of the Eastern Partnership – medium-term guiding principles

for the implementation of the neighbourhood policy, for example through

the idea of ‘more for more and less for less’, which demanded a stronger use

of conditionality in negotiations with partner countries (Emerson 2011).

Irene Hahn-Fuhr and Kai-Olaf Lang

Poland’s Eastern policy ideas as well as its Presidency priorities had to be

aligned to the ENP review or included in it.

The behavioural orientation of the Polish EU Council Presidency

In light of these multiple limitations, the Polish Presidency was anxious not

only to implement its core goals but also – as in the case of the Ukrainian

association and the pressing of its finalisation despite the obvious problems

on Kiev’s side – not to take away at least future development options of the

Eastern Partnership. Overall the aim was to demonstrate that the Eastern

Partnership is still relevant.

Against this backdrop, the Eastern Partnership Summit that took place on

28 and 29 September 2011 in Warsaw was clearly the neighbourhood policy

highlight of the Presidency. In the months leading up to it, Warsaw had put

much energy into the talks on a joint final declaration, above all in order to

obtain its old objectives such as the opening of a long-term membership

perspective for the Eastern neighbours or an affirmation of visa-free travel.

In view of known opposition in many EU member states, it was not surpris-

ing that the joint statement ultimately included only a general acknowledge-

ment of the European aspirations of the partner countries (Council of the

European Union 2011). It was therefore not possible to talk about a new

quality. The summit and declaration improved the existing mechanisms but

did not determine any fundamentally different policy guidelines for the part-

nership (Sadowski 2011: 154f.). Beyond the ‘compulsory elements’ such as

the operationalisation of the ‘more for more’ principle for the Eastern Part-

nership, the declaration however also included important passages from the

Polish point of view, such as the announcement of an additional 150 million

euros for the financial backing of the Eastern Partnership between 2011 and

2013 or the commissioning of the HR and Commission for the creation of a

roadmap containing the cooperation tools and concrete measures until the

next summit.

While an improved presence of EU participants at the summit compared

to the launch summit in Prague could be chalked up as a positive, the Pres-

idency had to deal with significant difficulties with the ‘problem case’ of

Belarus. Poland had taken a hard line against the Lukashenko regime after

the brutal repression of the opposition by the regime and especially after the

numerous verbal attacks by Minsk against the Warsaw government.

Nonetheless, Poland was still not interested in the complete isolation of its

Chapter 4: Ambitious realism

neighbour. An obvious sign of this as well as an attempt at symbolic bridge-

building was the invitation of the Belorussian Foreign Minister to the sum-

mit. This offer was however rejected by Minsk (PAP 2011b). More difficult

than the absence of Belarus was however the refusal of the partner countries

to partake in a declaration that denounced the domestic political situation in

Belarus. As a result of their own imperfect developments, the representatives

from Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Georgia were obviously

not prepared to criticise human rights violations in other countries of the

Eastern Partnership (Euractiv 2011). Poland could record as a success the

unity of the EU states; they agreed on a joint declaration in which the regime

in Minsk was sharply condemned (MFA 2011b). Furthermore, nine billion

euros of credit was made available to Belarus for when the country allows

reforms and observes minimum constitutional standards (PAP 2011c).

Not least the discussion over the EU–Ukraine association agreement

highlighted that the Polish Presidency wanted to contribute to a flexibilisa-

tion but also to a reinterpretation of only recently fixed guidelines in dealings

with the Eastern partners. The advocating of a signing of the association

agreement despite domestic political abuses meant exactly this: Poland

pleaded that the EU at least did not obstruct the option of the association, as

strategic and political arguments against a withdrawal of these important

institutional opportunities for the connection of Ukraine to the European

Union are significant in the view of Warsaw. Poland did not in any way want

to distance itself from the principle of conditionality. However, it followed

a different approach than countries such as France or Germany, who already

wanted to tie the negotiations and their finalisation to the adherence to the

basic conditions. Poland in contrast wanted to successfully lead the negoti-

ations to the end in order to judge during the final ratification process whether

Ukraine observed the criteria to which it was bound: “But in order to un-

dertake monitoring, there needs to be a contract”, explained Foreign Minister

Sikorski in November (PAP 2011d). In October the protracted negotiations

over the free-trade section of the association agreement were concluded and

Warsaw wanted to derive a visible sign with the initialling of the contract.

Despite Polish efforts – such as the visit by Foreign Minister Sikorski and

his Swedish counterparts to a football match in Donetsk in order to appeal

to the Ukrainian leadership, or meetings with President Bronislaw Ko-

morowski with his Ukrainian counterpart Yanukovych in August 2011 and

the Presidents of Poland, Germany and Ukraine in November 2011 in

Wrocław – Kiev remained unyielding in the highly important Tymoshenko

case. It can therefore almost be seen as a success that on 19 December the

Irene Hahn-Fuhr and Kai-Olaf Lang

EU–Ukraine summit took place in Kiev. Although it did not result in an

initialling of the association agreement, the conclusions of the negotiations

were disclosed. This achieved one of Poland’s important goals, but the signal

that a formal, mutual agreement had been reached was not sent.5

Visible progress was made in contrast in the relations with Georgia and

Moldova. On 12 December 2011 the opening of negotiations over a DCFTA

was agreed with both countries (PAP 2011e). Poland had worked hard for

some time on the cooperation with Moldova in particular; visits from Prime

Minister Tusk and Foreign Minister Sikorski had made their interest clear.

Warsaw’s intention was obviously to create a new model country after the

growing problems with Ukraine. Despite political and constitutional-law

controversies and the unsolved Transnistrian conflict, Moldova appeared to

be the country that at that time most clearly allowed a rapprochement with

the EU. In relation to Armenia and Azerbaijan, the EU agreed in December

to the beginning of negotiations over visa liberalisation and readmission

agreements. A mobility partnership was signed with Armenia in October.

In the multilateral dimension of the Eastern Partnership, Poland empha-

sised in particular the significance of sectoral cooperation. This was made

clear through the establishing of new dialogue fora – the Business Forum of

the Eastern Partnership, Conference of Regional and Local Authorities – as

well as through meetings at minister and working levels and high-level sym-

posia, including commerce with the establishment of a new panel in the

framework of the Eastern Partnership, agriculture with consideration of the

new European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture & Rural Devel-

opment (ENPARD), economy, statistical governance and customs but also

common security and defence policies. Particularly noteworthy was the field

of justice and home affairs. In the framework of a ministerial meeting in

Poznan, an action plan for the ‘Prague Process’ was agreed (Ministry of the

Interior and Administration of Poland 2011). This initiative goes beyond the

EU–Eastern Partnership relationship and includes also other countries from

the post-soviet region as well as Turkey. Its goal is the easing and improving

of migration and at the same time the strengthening of the cooperation be-

tween police, border protection agencies and customs authorities. In De-

cember 2011 the Söderköping Process, a cooperation framework of member

states and neighbouring countries along the EU’s Eastern border in the fields

5 State Secretary Dowgielewicz hoped after the EU–Ukraine summit that the initialling

could be brought about by the end of 2011. The EU was however only in March 2012

ready to undertake this step (see Dowgielewicz 2011).

Chapter 4: Ambitious realism

of asylum and migration, was also integrated into the Eastern Partnership.6

The majority of the cooperation palette was discussed at the third meeting

of the civil society forum of the Eastern Partnership in Poznań at the end of

November 2011. Polish NGOs were strongly represented in these discus-

sions from the start.

An idea floated at the beginning of 2011 by the Polish Foreign Minister

that became concretised over the course of the Presidency was the founding

of a European Endowment for Democracy. Different from existing mea-

sures, the argument ran, the EU “needs a lighter, less bureaucratic and more

flexible instrument” that allows fast and goal-directed action (Sikorski

2011b: 52). The EED fulfilled at least two functions for Warsaw. Firstly,

they could use it to react to the developments in the Arabic world but also

link it with the engagement with Eastern Europe: the traditional abiding

theme of democratisation could now be supported through the commitment

to the political changes on the Southern periphery. This is all aligned under

the title “deep democracy”, as was targeted in the ENP review. Secondly,

with the EED Poland had successfully placed a new tool in the ENP toolbox.

The ENP review had already affirmed the funds in principle, but it required

collaboration with the HR and the continual communication of the project

with the partners in the EU before the sentiments of the member states were

ultimately accepted in the form of a political declaration on 15 December

2011 (Council of the European Union 2011).7 The official final report of the

Polish Presidency described the EED as a ‘conceptual’ contribution by

Poland to a common foreign and security policy (MFA 2012: 45).

Conclusion: professional leadership but modest results

The Eastern Partnership was a focal area of activity for Poland’s Council

Presidency, but one where little progress could be made. The external lim-

itations of a political, institutional or programmatic nature denied Warsaw

the opportunities to develop or even influence this political field. Overall it

can be said that Poland followed a relatively defensive approach, presumably

6 The Söderköping Process was included in the first of the platforms of the Eastern

Partnership as the new panel ‘Asylum and Migration’, Chancellery of Sweden 2011.

7 The EED was thematised according to the Gymnich meeting in Sopot, among others.

In the late autumn, Foreign Minister Sikorski together with the HR wrote to the mem-

ber states in order to promote participation in the funds (see Gazeta Prawna 2011b).

Irene Hahn-Fuhr and Kai-Olaf Lang

in order to safeguard – or even to rescue – what had already been achieved.

This conservative approach is not to be confused with retreat or resignation.

It is more the result of a pragmatic understanding of the circumstances. Ul-

timately, Poland had to stabilise the structure of the Eastern Partnership,

maintain the fabrication of its building blocks and implement only the oc-

casional new element in the framework of the cooperation. Larger extensions

or reconstructions were not possible. In hindsight, Poland can be satisfied

with its modest but realistic achievements. At least for the period of the

Presidency, a complete collapse of foreign-policy attention by the EU with

regards to its Eastern neighbours could be avoided, and key components such

as the association process could be pursued.

Considering fundamental presidential functions, the Polish Presidency

can be considered mildly positive in terms of the Eastern Partnership. The

organisational development and the management of ongoing processes went

well. The extensive expertise and sufficient personnel support in the admin-

istration helped here, as did the contact with the institutions in Brussels, even

if the communication with the uncompleted European External Action Ser-

vice represented a particular challenge. All scheduled meetings concerning

the Eastern Partnership were recognised as administratively well prepared.

Especially the significant presence of EU leaders during the Eastern Part-

nership Summit can be considered as satisfactory.

New impulses and the setting of the agenda could only be followed

through in isolated cases in view of the unfavourable underlying circum-

stances. It is notable that Sikorski successfully convinced the HR and the

majority of the European Parliament of the necessity of an EED, especially

against the hesitation of the German government. The EED constitutes one

of the few sustainable and visible initiatives of the Presidency. Moreover, in

view of the extensive dropping of representation functions, the representa-

tion functions of the Council Presidency in the European Parliament (inter-

institutional agency) performed in consultation with the HR can be assessed

as a significant plus point.

The picture is more mixed with regards to the mediation tasks. On the one

hand, the internal mediation in connection with the European Neighbour-

hood Policy in relation to the balancing of the discussion with the Southern

dimension as a result of the Arab Spring was clearly successful. On the other

hand, although the Council Presidency was able through its activities to bro-

ker a differentiated declaration of the Partnership Summit between the mem-

ber states, this remained without a forceful strategic appeal and without a

breakthrough in sensitive issues like the European aspirations of the partner

Chapter 4: Ambitious realism

countries or visa liberalisation. In the field of external representation, the

Polish Presidency was furthermore not in a position to bring the remaining

five Eastern partner countries on board with regards to the issue of Belarus,

which was particularly frustrating for Warsaw. Regarding the relatively li-

mited impact on Kiev in the Tymoshenko case, there is even the impression

that Poland lost at this time an established strength, namely the ability to

exert decisive influence on its Eastern neighbours through its political weight

and as an advocate of the neighbourhood policy in the EU. On the other hand,

significant successes could be achieved with countries such as Georgia and

Moldova.

In the overall picture it is however not surprising that in the geopolitical

and internal climate a true strategic development of the neighbourhood pol-

icy was not realisable and instead an attempt was made to push existing

pathways – such as the roadmap for the 2013 summit – to the front. Never-

theless, taken as a whole a positive judgement can be made. Poland can be

considered as a committed and solid broker in times of stagnation. Poland

dampened expectations without causing the long-term goals of the Eastern

Partnership to be abandoned. Although Poland made no secret of its prefer-

ence for cooperation with the Eastern neighbours, it was never perceived as

partisan or one-sided. And ultimately it skilfully executed its presidential

tasks against a wealth of external adversity. In this sense, the main area of

negotiation of the Polish Presidency – the Eastern Partnership – is a graphic

example of a Presidency that achieved a moderate result but that did every-

thing right. What footprint Warsaw left behind will probably only become

clear after a few years. In the meantime, the Presidency management has

had one effect: Poland remains also after the Presidency the symbolic leader

state of the Eastern Partnership.

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Chapter 4: Ambitious realism

Chapter 5: Between honest broker and self-centred president

Energy and climate Policy during the Polish EU Council

Presidency

Ernest Wyciszkiewicz

The EU energy landscape in the making

In recent years the EU has experienced exponential growth of legislative and

non-legislative initiatives related to energy and climate policies. This re-

flected a steady increase in political and economic significance of these

fields for the EU as well as for the individual member states. Both energy

and climate are highly complex domains, with internal and external dimen-

sions intertwined, and a large number of EU-level, state and non-state actors.

These actors espouse different interests and numerous frequently divisive

issues with serious political or financial implications. However, the EU gov-

ernments accepted that the EU would badly need a coherent approach in

climate and energy policy to tackle various external and internal challenges

and to meet desirable goals, such as ensuring security of supply, establishing

competitive electricity and gas markets and responding to environmental

risks. Therefore, the transformation of the hitherto underdeveloped energy

landscape in Europe has been under way due to overall political consensus

among member states and the determination of the European Commission,

fuelled by the volatility of energy markets, growing import dependence and

recurrent supply crises.

A significant vulnerability to supply disruption due to heavy oil and gas

import reliance on a single supplier drew the attention of the Polish govern-

ment to a common EU energy policy as a means to increase Poland’s re-

silience to external shocks. Poland has consistently supported the idea of a

common energy policy and called for solidarity in meeting challenges to

security of supply. However, similarly to other members, Poland has opted

for preserving national sovereignty over energy mix, which ultimately was

confirmed by the Treaty of Lisbon. At the same time, physical and regulatory

integration of energy markets ranked high on the Polish agenda, which was

demonstrated by its firm support for the third liberalisation package as out-

lined by the Commission. The third pillar of the EU energy policy, which

now might be narrowed down to decarbonisation, has been seen as a burden

rather than an opportunity, except for energy efficiency, which was given a

high priority in the national energy strategy (Ministry of Economy 2009).

The broader context of the EU energy policy during the Polish EU Council

Presidency is certainly the Eurozone crisis and the debate on economic gov-

ernance of the EU that cast a shadow on other domains, including energy

and climate. However, this influence should not be overestimated, since it

was anticipated long before Poland took over the Presidency. Thus, the Eu-

rozone crisis could have been a challenge had the Presidency planned to

introduce far-reaching and controversial decisions in the second half of 2011.

Since this was not the case, the economic crisis turned out to be rather helpful

by putting an additional emphasis on Polish calls for more market-oriented

policy with respect to both energy and climate.

The energy policy during the Polish EU Council Presidency

Background

In the field of energy, the Polish Presidency was facing a typical problem of

matching contradictory expectations; that is, putting aside national interests

to act as honest broker and simultaneously making use of its perceived com-

petences, which by nature are located in the key areas for national interests.

Additionally, inflated domestic expectations put the government under sig-

nificant pressure.

Poland took over the Presidency in the midst of several parallel processes

under way in the field of energy since 2010. At the strategic level in Novem-

ber 2010 the Commission published the Communication on Energy strategy

to 2020 (European Commission 2010a) and announced its plans to prepare

the long-term Energy Roadmap 2050 by the end of 2011. Additionally, it

released papers on energy infrastructure priorities (European Commission

2010b) to initiate debate about eliminating bottlenecks and developing ef-

fective and interconnected transmission systems for gas and electricity. At

the same time it was about to prepare the proposals for boosting the external

dimension of the EU energy policy, which was a result of Polish pre-Presi-

dency efforts. Looking into more technical issues a follow-up to the third

liberalisation package (which entered into force in March 2011) was pre-

sented in December 2010 in the form of proposed regulation on “Energy

market integrity and transparency” (European Commission 2010c). More-

Ernest Wyciszkiewicz

over, in June 2011 the Commission published the “Energy Efficiency Di-

rective” proposal and Poland was obliged to moderate the first phase of dis-

cussions in working groups and the Council (European Commission

2011a).

Expectations

By and large, Poland was expected to put energy on a shortlist of its priorities.

The external dimension emerged as an obvious choice, notably with Russia

and security of supply lurking behind. Yet, the Polish government decided

not to target directly the EU’s relations with major gas suppliers, definitely

one of the most divisive issues among member states. Instead, it looked at

external capabilities through the prism of developing internal coherence and

transparency and extending energy acquis into the immediate neighbour-

hood. Such a decision was naturally driven by national interests and an EU-

wide perspective at the same time. Initially, it might have been seen as

masking out real objectives, but generally Poland managed to focus on issues

of European importance and to avoid controversies with a too narrow-mind-

ed approach. Particularly helpful was the position of the European Com-

mission, which not only subscribed to the Polish intention of strengthening

the external dimension but also added new features, namely the proposal on

the exchange of information and ex ante assessments of intergovernmental

energy agreements between members and third countries (European Com-

mission 2011b). Thus, the Polish initiative to give a boost to EU international

energy capabilities matched European demand. Additionally, other more

specific energy topics chosen by the Presidency were not highly controver-

sial either and were met with mostly positive feedback from other stake-

holders. One of the reasons might be that the energy debate in the second

half of 2011 was about principles and only slightly touched the future dis-

tribution of financial resources. Apart from the external dimension, where

Poland took the initiative, the stage was almost already set, and the Presi-

dency was expected to effectively manage issues that had already been put

on the table rather than bring in new ideas.

Chapter 5: Between honest broker and self-centred president

Preparations

Since unexpected proposals are not welcomed by the Commission and

member states, a lot of work needs to be done well before taking the Presi-

dency, especially to push forward a new process (agenda-setting function).

The Polish government chose the external dimension of the energy policy

as a priority in the first half of 2010 after intense inter-ministerial delibera-

tions. The second option on the table was the internal market, namely the

elimination of existing dysfunctions in terms of regulations. To strike a bal-

ance it was decided that external EU capabilities in energy should be de-

veloped not only through the establishing of a coherent and consistent ap-

proach towards third parties but most importantly through market instru-

ments, such as the enlarging and deepening of the Energy Community. It

should help the EU to operate more effectively in a highly competitive in-

ternational energy environment and to upgrade its bargaining power vis-à-

vis major producing, consuming and transit countries.

The external dimension was considered the least developed, though nec-

essary, element of energy policy. It was thought neither too controversial

nor divisive, but rather too ephemeral to be covered by legislative initiatives.

Climate policy and internal market gained prominence in political debate,

while very little had actually been achieved with respect to relations with

third countries. The Polish government aimed at distinguishing and giving

new impetus to the external dimension and security of supply by outlining

optimal instruments, preferably with market measures at the forefront. The

elusive concept of external energy policy was supposed to be politically

structured to pave the way for further developments under future presiden-

cies.

Poland cooperated intensely with the Hungarian Presidency to achieve

satisfactory conclusions of the European Council meeting of February 4

specifically devoted to energy as well as the Transport, Telecommunication

and Energy (TTE) Council of February 28. They were of utmost importance

for Poland since they were to provide a political mandate for the Presidency’s

operations. Poland also managed to put several important thoughts from the

perspective of national interests into these documents, inter alia an emphasis

on indigenous resources, a declaration on the elimination of energy islands,

and developing the North-South gas corridor in Central Europe (a special

High Level Group on North-South Interconnections was set up under the

chairmanship of the European Commission). The general objective was also

to clarify expectations about the Communication, which was to be published

Ernest Wyciszkiewicz

by the Commission during the Polish Presidency. Any delay would have a

detrimental effect on the Presidency’s intention of translating anticipated

proposals into political guidelines in the form of Council conclusions to pave

the way for more tangible initiatives later on. Actually, steps undertaken by

the Polish government before taking the post ought to be seen not just as

purely preparatory work but an integral part of the Presidency. Without these

efforts and constant consultations with the Commission and member states

it would hardly be possible to achieve progress.

Presidency in progress

Naturally the agenda of meetings under the Polish Presidency was known

well before it took off. Apart from tens of technical expert and working group

discussions, three large informal events were organised to prepare the ground

for the TTE Council planned for November 24. In July, Directors General

for energy from all member states gathered in Bełchatów to discuss the En-

ergy Roadmap 2050 under preparation by the Commission. It was telling

that an event devoted to the long-term development of energy markets and

innovations, with decarbonisation at the heart of the debate, was organised

close to one of the largest coal-fired power stations in the EU. The strong

signal was sent by Poland that the Presidency opted for the optimal balancing

of three fundamental goals of energy policy – competitiveness, security of

supply and sustainability. It was aimed at changing the paradigm of thinking

prevailing in the EU that combatting climate change was stretching like an

umbrella over other domains of energy policy such as energy efficiency or

market liberalisation. Poland regularly emphasised that competitiveness, in

particular under current circumstances, should be the major driving force of

energy policy. Such a tactic was adopted with respect to the talks on the low-

emission economy and Energy Roadmap 2050, in which Poland tried to use

agenda-setting prerogatives to change the hierarchy of debated issues. Mar-

ket initiatives were placed at the forefront to put aside discussions about

emission reductions and decarbonisation. It was just buying time, since ul-

timately the Energy Roadmap 2050 as outlined by the Commission in De-

cember 2011 turned out to be far from Polish expectations.

In September, Wrocław hosted Ministers of Energy of the EU, EFTA and

– for the first time ever – the Energy Community, who debated external

aspects of energy policy, a week after the Commission released its Com-

munication on the external dimension of energy policy (European Commis-

Chapter 5: Between honest broker and self-centred president

sion 2011c). It was against stereotypical expectations that Poland would be

especially interested in debates about measures to contain Russian political

and business ambitions. However, the Presidency chose export of the EU

acquis as a crucial tool for power projection. Participation of the non-EU

Energy Community members signalled that the Presidency supported the

logic of extending the EU internal energy market and stable investment cli-

mate to Southeast Europe and beyond on the basis of a legally binding

framework. To strengthen its position Poland became formal participant of

the Community. Additionally there was a link between the proactive ap-

proach towards the Energy Community and other Presidency priorities,

namely enlargement and the Eastern Partnership.

The Presidency took over and brought to a successful end in September

talks about a mandate for the Commission to negotiate a legally binding

treaty between the EU, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to construct a Trans-

Caspian Pipeline System and thus to pave the way for the realisation of the

Southern Gas Corridor. Actually it turned into the first operational achieve-

ment of external energy policy in the making.

Even more important was the Commission’s draft of decision setting up

an information exchange mechanism on intergovernmental agreements be-

tween Member States and third countries. This was an unintended conse-

quence of the Polish invitation of the EC to the intergovernmental negotia-

tions with Russia in 2010. The Commission decided to use that precedent to

build a formal mechanism for increasing its knowledge about political un-

derpinnings of trade contracts. In particular, the EC emphasised the need for

an ex-ante compatibility control mechanism to check if negotiated agree-

ments comply with EU law before they are signed. It is not fully clear what

role the Presidency played, be it initiating work on this proposal or just

shaping it, but Poland definitely provided food for thought a year before and

reaped the rewards during the Presidency because the Commission’s ideas

were harmonised with Polish thinking to a large extent. The general aim was

to generate pressure on other governments and companies through the po-

litical instrument of Council conclusions to make them give up various

clauses incompatible with internal market and competition acquis.

Moreover, in October in Cracow a high-level conference was held on

competitive and integrated markets as a guarantee of EU energy security.

When speaking about market issues, the Presidency emphasised the neces-

sity of full implementation of the third liberalisation package with no dero-

gations or exemptions for third countries. Additionally, the Presidency

strongly emphasised the need for reciprocity and transparency in mutual

Ernest Wyciszkiewicz

energy relations between the EU and its partners, along with establishing a

level playing field and investment stability. Although it was rightly moti-

vated by the need for maintaining integrity and coherence, it was obviously

a reaction to Russian insistence on special treatment under EU law, and was

welcomed with ambiguity in some member states (i.e. Germany). Later,

Poland managed to include into the Council conclusions a statement that the

energy chapter of a new PCA with Russia shall be fully consistent with

internal energy market legislation.

All cited major events during the Polish Presidency mirrored three es-

sential pillars of EU energy policy and therefore fit smoothly into the con-

ceptual framework of energy policy as proposed by the EC and approved by

the Council in recent years. However, Poland put things in preferable order

to attract broader attention to its priorities. Although security of supply still

prevailed in general public discourse in Poland, for pragmatic reasons it was

muted by the government at the EU level to avoid unnecessary tensions.

Instead it concentrated on improving internal markets, which started to be

identified as a truly effective instrument to exert influence on third countries.

Anchoring proposals in ongoing developments at the EU level made ad-

ministrative and managerial work for the Presidency easier. No serious con-

flict erupted between the Presidency and other members or institutions.

It should also be noted that Poland used the opportunity given by the

Presidency to speed up developments with respect to tightening regional

energy cooperation in Central Europe with North-South Interconnections

(NSI) as a cornerstone. It was formally beyond the scope of the Presidency’s

activities, since Poland acted as member state in the High Level Group es-

tablished under the European Commission. Holding the Presidency was

helpful for drawing attention to this project, which brought a concrete result

in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding and Action Plan (High Level

Group 2011) as well as general political acceptance that NSI should be an

integral part of the infrastructure development plan under discussion.

Poland managed to conclude its Presidency with quite extensive TTE

Council conclusions which dealt in a surprisingly in-depth way with many

aspects of international energy cooperation (Council 2011). There was a

certain risk of failure, since the Baltic States opposed some elements of the

conclusions with respect to electricity, but the Presidency reached a com-

promise through the deletion of the controversial fragment. Except for this

episode it would be difficult to point to any really serious controversies in

the field of energy.

Chapter 5: Between honest broker and self-centred president

By pushing the external dimension forward, Poland was not masking out

its real intentions and preferences but dressed them into a European costume

and ultimately gained the support of other stakeholders. Several issues fun-

damental for the Presidency were ultimately included in the conclusions,

notably the drafting of a coordination mechanism through regular formal

and informal meetings of Energy Ministers and other national officials, with

the participation of various Council formations and the Commission, to

achieve consistency in dealing with major energy actors. The Presidency

also insisted on improving the coherence of the EU position in international

organisations and forums such as the International Energy Agency, Energy

Charter Treaty, International Renewable Energy Agency, G8, G20, Inter-

national Energy Forum and others. Since no serious disagreements arose in

relation to the external dimension, the Presidency’s manoeuvring between

member states and EU institutions to reach a majority was relatively un-

problematic and smooth.

Any other business

Although the external dimension was put at the heart of the Polish pro-

gramme, the Presidency was also obliged to manage the negotiations over

other issues, inter alia the energy efficiency directive and regulation on mar-

ket transparency and integrity, which represented the core energy legislation

for the second half of 2011.

In June 2011 the Commission submitted the draft Energy Efficiency Di-

rective. It was noted that the Presidency quite effectively initiated discus-

sions in the Council and ensured smooth proceedings. Poland ranked effi-

ciency highly in its ‘Energy policy by 2030’ and was interested in giving a

boost to the whole process, bearing in mind the lack of sufficient progress

in meeting the agreed target of a 20% reduction by 2020. Simultaneously,

Poland used this opportunity to adjust this document to its own preferences.

It seemingly aimed at pulling out the efficiency strategy from the climate

policy and making it a more autonomous policy domain. This was met with