Daniel BEAUVOIS - The Return of Poland as an European Actor

Pouvoirs n°118 - La Pologne - septembre 2006 - p.5-19

The accession of Poland to the European Union in 2003 did not really represent a “return” since the Poles had in fact never abandoned the European scene. The article recalls the various manifestations of this continuous presence and the diverse attitudes of the rest of the continent toward it. After being a European exception in the sixteenth century, when it introduced a unique political system and covered the largest geographical area of the sub-continent after Russia, after being reduced to the tiny Duchy of Warsaw under Napoleon, after becoming a phoenix deploying its wings and its claws under Pilsudski after 1918, a ghost country during the Communist decades after 1945, a Goliath taking on the Soviet giant in 1980, Poland joined the European Union in 2003, with the wealth of experiences accumulated through its history and the energy drawn from the many ordeals suffered by its people. Résumé

Référence électonique : Daniel BEAUVOIS, "The Return of Poland as an European Actor", Pouvoirs, revue française d’études constitutionnelles et politiques, n°118, 2006, p.5-19. Consulté le 02-06-2012. URL : http://www.revue-pouvoirs.fr/The-Return-of-Poland-as-an.html