The vote came with a healthy margin above the 2/3 majority needed to pass a bill that ultimately transfers Poland's national sovereignity to other institutions. But the outcome - in favour of the EU treaty - was in doubt until the Sejm raised hands to vote. The anti-Lisbon faction within the PiS party was strong and enjoyed inspiration of influential catholic priest and a media mogul, Tadeusz Rydzyk. PiS, whose chairman is the president's twin brother and who also was prime minister at the time of negotiations concerning the new EU treaty, has once adopted the anti-Lisbon agenda quoting fears of disposession of north-western Poland after European court rulings and gay-lesbian marriages that were to come under the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
However unproven the allegations were, they provoked unprecedented political stirr, in which those who claimed Poland's grand victory as the treaty was agreed, now questioned the contents of it and raised alarm on looming national disaster. As the polls clearly showed, society is far from being frightened and demands a quick ratification, PiS slowly withdrew and struck a deal with the ruling moderate center-right Civic Platform to vote in favour of the treaty if a motion is passed not to adopt the Charter in full, and the president is given more authority in legislation on EU related issues.
President Lech Kaczyński and his twin brother Jarosław did not hesitate to use heavy weapons. The president appeared on television appealing to adopt extra safeguards for Poland's national interests in what was a video-clip with pictures of Angela Merkel alongside the leader of German revisionists Erika Steinbach, a pre-war map with half of today's Poland within the Third Reich's borders and a gay-couple in Canada. A week after that none of these is alive although the language remains strong. The Kaczyńskis brothers saved their faces and political future in a widely pro-European country but lost a few dozen anti-EU hardliners. And Poland felt like it re-joined the EU.
But there is still the vote in the second Chamber and the EU under the new treaty remains a terra incognita. The debate did not touch the real issues behind Lisbon. Poland did not debate the role and personality of the Council's President even though it will have to deal with him or her in the 2011 rotating presidency. Poland did not explain to its people what protection they gain under the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and what exemptions the British Protocol introduces. Poles do not know what it means that the EU will now get its legal status. All they will remember is Germans taking away their homes and gay people exchanging wedding rings under the EU flag.
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