At the end of the afternoon on 19 October, Piotr, 54 years old, set himself on fire in front of the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, to protest against damaging Polish government policies.
A few years previously, at the end of the last century and at the very last moment, Adam refused to enter the Great Hall of the People in Peking, where the Chinese authorities were getting ready to greet a delegation of European journalists.
These two symbolic acts illustrate Poland's recent history - and, through this, spell out the fundamental questions facing the European Union, replete with a warning to which it now has to respond.
We know nothing about Piotr, apart from the contents of the letter he left when making his final and ultimate act of sacrifice. In it, he explains the unbearable nature of the acts he believed had been committed by the ultra-conservative Party of Law and Justice (PiS) government. According to Slawomir Sierakowski, the Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Warsaw, in this letter he in turn denounces the restrictions on civil liberties now prevailing in Poland, the straitjacket imposed on the judiciary and public media, the discrimination practiced by the henchmen of Jaroslaw Kaczynski against immigrants, women, the LGBT community and Muslims, as well as their various attacks on the environment. He also explains that his suicide had a precise goal: to force “the chairman of PiS and the entire PiS nomenklatura to recognise that my death is their direct responsibility, and that they have my blood on their hands” (http://www.project-syndicate.org , 26 October).
Whatever feelings and judgments this suicide by self-immolation provokes, one fact cannot be ignored: Piotr’s letter of grievances is nothing less than the truth. Over the past few weeks, as reported by Véronique Leblanc, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission has once again condemned the adoption of laws that, according to the Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks, will undoubtedly, “undermine the independence of the judiciary again by subordinating it to the executive” (see EUROPE 11922). A few days later, the European Commission confirmed, on the initiative of its First Vice President, Frans Timmermans, “the existence of a clear risk of a serious violation to the rule of law in Poland” and it was therefore triggering the procedure included in article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty, an unprecedented act in the history of European construction (see EUROPE 11930).
Has the College chaired by Jean-Claude Juncker in this way pressed on “the nuclear option button" against Poland, as “sold” to us by a number of different media outlets? Yes, but it is also true that in this specific case it involves nothing other than a button made of the same paper as some of the Chinese tigers in the time of Chairman Mao. Notwithstanding that he is likely to obtain a four fifths majority at the Council of Ministers or in other words support from the 22 member states or 21 after Brexit, as pointed out by Alain Dauvergne (Notre Europe, the Jacques Delors Institute on 30 November), when he indicated that, “there is a clear risk of a serious violation" of Union values in Poland, the European Council will never unanimously decide to penalise a country even if it is well and truly guilty “of a serious and persistent violation" of these values: the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, has already made a commitment that he will not allow the sovereign honour and interests of his fellow traveller to be attacked in the project of constructing illiberal democracies.
It is in this regard that the gesture adopted by Adam in Peking should be an inspiration to the Union. In the delegation of the Spanish section of the Association of European journalists visiting China at the time, Adam Michnik was just another journalist but just a little bit different, all the same: as well as being the editor-in-chief of the Gazeta Wyborcza, the daily newspaper that emerged in the Solidarność movement, he was also a dissident that had waged an intellectual war against the Communist straitjacket under which his country and its neighbouring central European neighbours had been languishing. On that day, it was the dissident in him who recalled that he was forbidden to enter this sacrosanct temple of Communist China which, in his view, would have immediately been exploited by his life-long ideological enemies and, worse, would have led him to disowning the values that justified the combat in which he was engaged.
It is on the basis of these values - and nothing else - that the European Union should now take as a source of inspiration. During this very trip in China, Adam Michnik surprised his fellow brothers and sisters by asserting that the “European Revolution” initiated by the Schuman declaration was the most important revolution of all time because it had not been led, “against a despot, dictator or any power but for something: peace!" This is indeed the fundamental value underpinning the European adventure begun more than 60 years ago. Since its origins, the European project has been a political project at the service of peace on the continent.
Today, within this very Union, certain leaders are seeking to completely distort the project and return to the law of the nationalist jungle that previously prevailed. For having failed to reduce this project to a simple free trade project, which the artisans of Brexit had opted for and to quench their thirst for a total rejection of power-sharing, the marvellous role models provided by Trump, Putin and Erdoğan are now engaged in an increasingly relentless attack on the rule of law!
Faced with this descent into hell, it is imperative that the heirs of the original European project stand completely firm. It will be up to them to proceed to an examination of conscience to see whether the political and economic policies they have produced over recent decades and in which they had been a little too complicit or at least, the inadvertent creators of these delinquent democrats. The latter are everywhere: Warsaw, Budapest, Bratislava, Prague and Vienna but they are also elsewhere in the Union.
It is the task of the heirs of the original European project, the only ones worthy of reflecting on this appeal to reason launched by Piotr: as well as the political opponents of the Polish government manipulated by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, to, “remember that PiS voters are our mothers, brothers, neighbours, friends, and colleagues” and it is, above all, up to them to encourage these PiS voters to wake up before the evil genies of nationalism are reborn and victoriously drag Europe back to the situation that led to centuries of wars.
To this end, it is up to the heirs of the original European project to demonstrate the most resolute firmness when facing these democratic delinquents: no pasarán! They have to explain to the whole world that the European Union, contrary to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, is not a prison from whence there is no escape and that it is, ultimately, the best way of helping disorientated European citizens see reason. Losing delinquent member states is better than reneging on its fundamental values because this would do nothing but drive Europe into the abyss of history again. Today, the heirs of the "European Revolution" must stand up and show no fear or favour against authoritarian policies and the increasingly powerful dictators that are taking shape within its ranks. Over the decades that come, let us fight for peace!
Michel Theys