Polish E-mailers Lobby Ireland over EU Expansion Vote
October 18, 2002
Astounded at Ireland's earlier "no" vote against European Union expansion, Poland opted for a hi-tech lobby campaign ahead of Saturday's crucial second referendum, bombarding the island republic's potential three million voters with e-mails seeking their support.
Poland's push for inclusion began in earnest when their politicians and newspapers started urging readers to write to Irish voters. In June 2001, the first public referendum for the Nice Treaty, Ireland voted 54 percent against adding 10 new countries to the 15-member EU. Other member states did not require a public vote according to their constitutions.
A petition in the Polish "Rzeczpospolita" newspaper included the signatures of former Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki and film maker Andrzej Wajda, the BBC reported Tuesday. It was followed by template e-mail letters in the "Gazete Wyborcza," to be sent to five Irish newspapers.
Others Poles responded with personal e-mails and letters to the Irish Republic, in the hope that the eastward expansion set for 2004 would help create a stable political and trading block "without walls dividing it, without glaring inequalities, with development for all the people," Poland's former Prime Minister Lech Walesa told AFP this week.
A historic enlargement
The other proposed member states, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia, also have their hopes focused on the Irish vote. If the Nice Treaty is passed, the 10 countries would join the 15 current members adding 75 million people to the existing 400 million and creating a trading bloc larger than the United States.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has described the expansion proposal by the European Commission as "outstanding," reiterating overtures by the candidate countries who nonetheless admitted that there was still much groundwork to be done.
While increasing the EU in size, adding the 10 new members would only increase the community's wealth by five percent, as many of the eligible countries have relatively small economies.