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Poland International Organizations
Poland was a founding member of the United Nations (UN)
and
takes an active role in numerous UN agencies, including
the
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization; the World Health Organization; the United
Nations
Children's Emergency Fund; the Food and Agriculture
Organization;
the United Nations Industrial Development Organization;
and the
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. In the
postcommunist era, Warsaw has consistently supported
Western-led
UN initiatives such as Operation Desert Storm and the
condemnation of Serbian policies toward other republics of
the
former Yugoslavia. In 1992 Poland belonged to roughly
1,500
international governmental and private organizations.
After the change of government in mid-1989, Poland
assigned
the highest priority to obtaining full membership status
in NATO
and the EC as soon as possible. The West supported the
concept of
Poland's integration into Europe; however, only associate
status
in the EC and NATO had been achieved as of mid-1992.
Meanwhile,
in 1990 Warsaw had gained associate status in the Council
of
Europe, an organization including all West European
nations and
devoted to promoting democracy and the economic health of
its
members. The council granted Poland full membership after
the
free parliamentary elections in the autumn of 1991. In
November
1991, the EC approved ten-year associate status for
Poland,
Hungary, and the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic
(see
Southern Neighbors and the Visegrád Triangle, this ch.).
The
agreement provided certain trade concessions and generally
was
viewed as a first step toward eventual full membership.
Long and
spirited debate preceded the Sejm's ratification of
membership in
mid-1992. Political factions voiced various objections to
the
terms of the agreement. One minister expressed
reservations about
the excessive length of the ten-year adjustment period for
Poland
to reach the general economic development level of EC
members.
Nationalist elements, including the KPN considered the
agreement
a threat to Polish sovereignty
(see Political Parties
, this ch.).
Poland also had serious disagreements with the IMF,
which
suspended credits in 1991 because Warsaw had failed to
control
its budget deficit. In March 1992, however, the IMF
expressed
general support for the Polish economic program. By terms
of a
subsequent agreement with the IMF, Poland came back into
compliance with IMF deficit guidelines in exchange for
access to
US$1.5 billion in IMF loans.
Like its partners in the Visegrád Triangle, Poland
remained
frustrated in 1992 because the West was responding slowly
to its
attempts to obtain full membership in European
international
organizations. Nevertheless, Poland continued its full
support of
NATO and the European security role of the CSCE and left
little
doubt in mid-1992 of its long-term strategic goal, "to
rejoin
Europe."
* * *
Because of the ongoing transformation of Poland's
system of
governance, current political analyses and reports are an
important source of information. The most useful of these
are the
RFE/RL Research Report and the Foreign Broadcast
Information Service's Daily Report: East Europe.
Arthur R.
Rachwald's excellent summaries of Polish matters in the
Yearbook on International Communist Affairs
chronicle
political events from the imposition of martial law in
1981
through the elections of 1991. Informator Polska
'91,
available only in Polish, is the best source on government
structure at all levels after 1989. The communist
government
system of the 1980s is summarized in Communist Regimes
in
Eastern Europe by Richard Staar. Jane Leftwich Curry's
Poland's Journalists: Professionalism and Politics
is
among useful sources on censorship and the print media.
Among
many discussions of Poland's foreign policy, those
meriting
special attention are "Poland and the Soviet Union" by
Roger E.
Kanet and Brian V. Souders; The Bloc That Failed:
Soviet East
European Relations in Transition by Charles Gati;
"From
Visegrád to Kraków: Cooperation, Competition, and
Coexistence in
Central Europe" by Rudolf L. Tokes, and "Polish-Lithuanian
Relations: Past, Present, and Future" by Stephen R.
Burant. (For
further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of October 1992
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