Improving Poland’s Relations With Germany Will Be Easy, Except… 

Meaningful dialogue between Warsaw and Berlin must resume for the sake of Europe 

15 November 2023

Poland’s new incoming government will seek to mend fences with Germany, but despite Berlin’s turn away from the flawed Russia policy, both countries will need to bridge several fundamental differences over security and the future of Europe.

The victory of the liberal and left-wing parties in the October elections was met with a sense of enormous relief throughout Europe and the USA.

There is a feeling that Poland might influence other populism-leaning governments in Central-Eastern Europe by setting an example of effectively opposing populism, xenophobia, hate, divisions and democratic backsliding.

Back to a rational foreign policy

The new government has to deal with a myriad of problems that have hurt Poland so much in the past eight years: degenerated democratic governance, politicised management of the economy as well as weakened independent judiciary, civil society and media.

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Eugeniusz Smolar

Eugeniusz Smolar is a foreign and security policy analyst at the Centre for International Relations in Warsaw. Under communism, he was a member of the democratic opposition, political prisoner and émigré. He worked as a journalist and former Director of the Polish Section of the BBC World Service in London for 22 years. Following his return to Poland, he became the deputy chairman of the Management Board of Polish Radio and set up the first in Poland news and talk station Inforadio, now TokFM.

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