Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime minister, has written in the German daily “Die Welt” that while EU member states are supposedly equal, there is a de facto oligarchy in place whereby the strongest countries exert power.
“In addition, the strong make mistakes and are incapable of accepting criticism from outside,” Morawiecki wrote.
He also argued that the “security valve” that protects the bloc from majority tyranny is the principle of unanimity, but seeking a compromise between 27 member states with often conflicting interests, “can sometimes be frustrating and a compromise may not satisfy everybody 100 per cent.” He conceded, however, that the unanimity principle guarantees that all voices are heard and that “the solutions adopted fulfil the minimum expectations of every member state.”
Morawiecki was also critical of suggestions that Germany’s decisions should carry more weight, arguing that past German decisions had been faulty and asked “if Europe had always in recent years behaved the way Germany wanted, would we be in a better or worse situation today?”
He argued that in this scenario, not only the Nord Stream 1 Russia-Germany gas pipeline but also the contested Nord Stream 2 would have been functioning for several months. “Europe’s dependence on Russian gas, which today serves (Russian President Vladimir – ed.) Putin as a blackmail tool against the whole continent, would be almost irreversible,” Morawiecki wrote.
According to Morawiecki, if Europe supplied armaments to Ukraine at the same scale and speed as Germany did then the war would be long over “with absolute victory for Russia and Europe facing a new war.”