In the most high-profile attack on the prime minister by an east European politician, the Nobel prize winner who led the Solidarity trade union movement said Cameron had failed to appreciate the benefits to Britain from the end of the cold war.
Walesa showed his anger by joking in an interview with a Polish news channel that the collapse of communism had perhaps been a mistake, as he pointed out that Britain had benefited from the ending of the iron curtain. He told Poland's TVN24: "I could say that ending communism was a great mistake so that Great Britain would have to arm itself and spend much more than it is currently contributing to Europe.
"Poles finished communism and Great Britain profited significantly from this. [Cameron] should not forget this, he should do the maths. He should realise that Poles finished with this system at the cost of 70% of their economy. He should see this and then he will understand that Europe, that countries like Great Britain, are again behaving irrationally and shortsightedly."
Walesa, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1983 after leading the Solidarity strikes in the Gdansk shipyard, spoke out after Cameron said at last week's EU summit that the last Labour government had made a mistake in not imposing restrictions on workers from Poland and seven other eastern European countries which joined the EU in 2004.
A No 10 source said: "There will be no change of view on this. The PM thinks we should learn from Labour's mistakes on immigration, put in place more robust transitional controls in future and, in the meantime, make sure people can come here to work but not just to claim benefits.
"Immigration has benefited Britain, but it needs to be properly controlled and frankly when the Labour party were in government, it wasn't."
The remarks by Cameron have also created a crisis in the new Tory grouping in the European parliament after Jarosław Kaczynski, the former Polish prime minister, wrote to Cameron to complain. Kaczynski is the co-founder, along with his late twin brother and former Polish president Lech, of the Law and Justice party – the second largest member of the European Conservatives and Reformists group after the Tories.
Marcin Mastalerek, a Law and Justice MP, told Polish Radio: "If Cameron does not revise his view on this subject it will make working together in the European parliament exceptionally difficult."
Cameron and other Tory ministers have intensified the rhetoric before the lifting of restrictions on workers from Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the EU in 2007, on 1 January. The prime minister said at the EU summit: "I think the mistake the last government made of giving unfettered immediate access to the UK labour markets by Poland, Hungary and the Baltic member states in one go was a huge mistake. When a country joins you are able to put in place transitional controls. When that happens we need to look very carefully at what kind of controls we put in place. It may be necessary to make new mechanisms, the percentage of GDP or the rates of wages."
The prime minister's remarks prompted a rebuke over the weekend in the Observer from the president of Bulgaria, Rosen Plevneliev, who asked if Britain was "writing a history of a switch to isolation, nationalism".
Comments by Walesa and others are likely to be seized on by the Liberal Democrats, who have criticised Cameron's rhetoric. Vince Cable, the business secretary, warned on Sunday that the Tories were flirting with the language of Enoch Powell as he said east European immigrants have contributed more to Britain in taxes than they have claimed in benefits.
Ryszard Czarnecki, a British-born Law and Justice MEP, accused Cameron of a "mistaken diagnosis". He told Wprost: "The British economy has earned billions of pounds thanks to the work of Polish migrants over the past nine years … I think the letter [by former prime minister] Kaczynski will provide prime minister Cameron with some valuable material."
Pawel Kowal, leader of the Poland Comes First party – also a member of Cameron's group in the European parliament – said he was furious. In an open letter to Cameron, reported by Polish Radio, Kowal said: "They are not citizens of the United Kingdom but are in some sense under your care. When you say that opening the British labour market to Poles was a mistake, you are attacking their dignity and this is not for the first time."
Pawel Swidlicki of the pro-reform Open Europe thinktank said: "These comments highlight a lack of strategic vision in his EU policy. He needs to find the right balance between reassuring a domestic electorate which wants fundamental reform while also keeping key EU partners onside. If he does not up his game, he risks undermining his broader vision for EU reform."
Source: theguardian.com/
Author: Nicholas Watt
No comments:
Post a Comment