Recently, French president Emmanuel Macron addressed the Polish government with perhaps the most scathing criticism of any European leader to date. Polish citizens, he said, “deserve better” than the current government, which “has decided to isolate itself in the workings of Europe.”
That is a valid point. However, it is highly unfortunate that the criticism from the French president was driven more by parochial—i.e. characteristically French—protectionism rather than by genuine concerns over the character of political regime in Poland.
Similarly to Hungary under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Poland has taken a dangerous turn after the election of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) to government in October 2015. Since its inception, the PiS government has proceeded with an unlawful reform of the country’s Constitutional Tribunal, tightened control of media, and is seeking to reverse some of the economic achievements of the post-communist era.
As a result, both Poland and Hungary are finding themselves increasingly marginalized in the EU, as illustrated by the fact that on his tour of Central and Eastern Europe, Macron met with Czech, Slovak, Romanian, and Bulgarian leaders—but not those of the two “illiberal democracies” in the heart of the Europe.
Yet Macron’s efforts are not geared towards closing the gap that currently exists between Poland and Hungary, and the rest of the EU. Nor has he shown a particular degree of solidarity towards civil society and those trying to stop the authoritarian drift of their countries. Instead, central to his critique is Poland’s refusal to accept the prepared changes to the EU’s posted workers directive, which regulates the conditions under which companies in member states can use their employees in one state to provide services in another.
Under existing legislation, workers from a low-wage country like Poland “posted” to a high-wage country like France have to comply with minimum wage legislation in their destination, but remain employed in their home country, in the company that “posts” them. They generally face a lower tax burden, enjoy a lower level of employment protection than the one that exists in highly regulated economies like France’s, and also remain tied to the social security systems at home.
Mr. Macron wants to change that, first by restricting the time during which a worker can be “posted” to a country without being subject to its rules over social security and pensions to just 12 months. Second, he wants the EU to legislate that employers be obliged not only to comply with existing minimum wage legislation in the country where workers are “posted”—which they already do—but also to pay at least the same wage that domestic workers are paid for the same work.
But that is just protectionism, pure and simple, which goes against the idea of the EU’s single market. Competition has many forms. Being free to offer the same service cheaper than a competitor is as important as being able to offer a better or more innovative one. Requiring “equal pay for equal work” will effectively drive Romanian or Polish service providers—typically bus or truck drivers—who might not speak the language or know local idiosyncrasies, out of the markets of wealthier EU countries.
It does not matter that workers are “posted” across the EU in limited numbers (just over 2 million in 2015), and over half of them in neighboring countries.
What matters is the impression that Macron’s efforts help create: that the EU is a project of selective economic integration driven by great-power realpolitik, rather than an attempt to foster a genuinely competitive and open economic environment. That will only make those in Poland and Hungary already critical of the project double down on their cynicism. Worse yet, it will also make the job harder for those who do want to make the case for the EU and for European values in their home countries, in Central Europe and beyond.
Dalibor Rohac is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Twitter: @DaliborRohac.
