Poles vote to rejoin EU
President Aleksander Kwasniewski told cheering supporters today that Poland has fulfilled its aspirations to return to Europe, after exit polls showed an overwhelming 82% voting ’yes’ to EU membership.
“We are coming back. We are coming back to Europe,” Kwasniewski said at the presidential palace after kissing his wife, Jolanta, and hugging former Solidarity activists.
Concern that voter turnout would fall below the 50% required to make the referendum valid spurred many to the polls on the second day of voting today, encouraged by their priests, family and friends.
Turnout reached 56% of the registered 29.5 million voters, according to exit polls, after an 18% vote on Saturday.
The referendum gives Kwasniewski the popular mandate needed to ratify Poland’s treaty with the EU, signed at an Athens summit in April. The first official results were expected after midnight (2200 Irish time.)
With 38 million people, Poland would be the largest country to join the 15-nation bloc, leading the largest wave of EU expansion with voting power equal to Spain and behind only Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy.
Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta and Lithuania have already approved EU membership with referendums. The Czech Republic votes next week, followed by Latvia and Estonia in September.
Cyprus is leaving the decision to parliament.
Polish leaders campaigned heavily for accession, saying it would accelerate modernisation in Poland, still recovering from 40 years of communist rule that ended in 1989, and end historic division in Europe.
Outside of the EU, Poland, with a GDP of just 42% of the EU average, would never bridge the gap with the West, leaders argued.
They were opposed by a loose alliance of convenience between ultraconservative Catholics worried about an erosion of traditional values and radical farmers who warned that Poland’s 2 million sustenance farms would disappear under western competition.
Dismay at poor first-day turnout of just 18% mobilised a grass-roots call to vote today, with EU supporters counting on the Polish habit of voting after Mass.
From their pulpits, priests in the devoutly Roman Catholic country reminded people of the importance of voting.
Polish television and radio counted down the hours until polls closed. But with no evidence of a huge response and with Polish leaders silent, the leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza still fretted on its website: “Will we manage to enter Europe?”
In Warsaw, where turnout on Saturday was the highest nationally at 34%, people returned early from weekend homes to vote, creating a traffic jam hours earlier than the usual pattern.
Turnout appeared to pickup in rural areas where Sunday is the only day for many to rest – but that was not necessarily heartening news for pro-EU forces.
