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Euro must be stronger before Poland joins, says new PM Kopacz

01 October 2014, 20:44 CET
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(WARSAW) - Poland needs a "stronger eurozone" before it joins the bloc and will safeguard its own security by taking a pragmatic approach toward the crisis in neighbouring Ukraine, the country's new premier said on Wednesday.

Ewa Kopacz told parliament that "a stronger eurozone and stable Polish economy are the pre-conditions for entry into the eurozone" in her first policy address ahead of a confidence vote she easily won.

Taking over from Donald Tusk, tapped as the European Council's next president, the 57-year-old former emergency room physician and health minister insisted "pragmatism" would dictate her government's policy on the crisis in Ukraine.

"We support the pro-European direction of development Ukraine has adopted, but we can't replace Ukrainians who themselves are responsible for reforming their own country," she said, urging international "solidarity" with Kiev.

Poland has been among Ukraine's staunchest supporters in its bloody struggle with pro-Russian separatists in the east of the strife-torn country.

But the Polish economy is beginning to feel the pinch amid a sanctions war between the West and Russia over Moscow's role in Ukraine.

Kopacz slammed as "unsatisfactory" the compensation proposed by Brussels for Polish fruit and vegetable growers hit by a Russian embargo.

Aas concern grows over Poland's own safety in the wake of fresh Russian threats, Kopacz -- facing a general election next autumn -- insisted that security was her top priority.

"All the decisions and actions of my new government will be made based on political calculations that have one objective: the security of Polish families," she said.

"A greater US military presence in Poland" and closer ties between the EU and US would reinforce that security, she said.

She also gave a thumbs-up to the ambitious EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a massive free trade deal that is about to enter a seventh round of negotiations in Washington.

- 'Female Santa Claus' -

Warsaw has so far refused to peg a target date for eurozone entry. It meets most of the single currency's Maastricht Treaty economic criteria, but must still bring its budget deficit under three percent of GDP.

A bright spot on Europe's economic map, Poland has recorded a quarter century of expansion since it peacefully shed communism in 1989, with forecasts of three percent growth both this year and next.

Unwilling to jeopardise this winning streak, Warsaw adopted a wait-and-see approach on the bloc's efforts to resolve its debt crisis.

Last year senior Polish officials said entry within a decade was realistic, but the crisis in neighbouring Ukraine has since prompted some to consider more speedy eurozone entry as an added security measure alongside its EU and NATO membership.

The ex-communist nation of 38 million people, which borders Ukraine and is central Europe's largest economy, is obliged to join the single currency bloc under the terms of its European Union entry but there is no deadline for accession.

Poland expects to meet all eurozone entry targets by 2015, but will also need to muster a two-thirds parliamentary majority to push through necessary constitutional changes to drop its zloty currency.

With winter just around the corner and Russian gas supplies to Central Europe already fluctuating, Kopacz put her full support behind an EU-wide energy union proposed by her predecessor Tusk.

With Poland heavily reliant on its own coal supplies for electricity, Kopacz said Warsaw would continue to oppose international proposals for high cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

She also assured hundreds of miners protesting cheap Russian coal imports outside parliament Wednesday that she would protect Polish coal against unfair competition and work to make the domestic coal sector profitable.

Her list of promises prompted Leszek Balcerowicz, the austerity-minded mastermind behind Poland's transition from a communist command economy to the free market, to tweet: "Who's the female equivalent of Santa Claus? #Kopacz".

In her first trip abroad as premier, Kopacz will visit Brussels on October 6 and Berlin three days later.


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