POLAND:Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel has invoked the spirit of the Solidarity movement that brought down communism and helped unite Europe to urge Poland to play a more constructive role in EU affairs.
On a two-day visit to improve strained bilateral relations and sound out Polish reservations on the constitutional treaty, Dr Merkel struck an unusually personal note in a well-received speech at Warsaw University.
Dr Merkel, a more popular figure in Poland than her predecessor Gerhard Shröder, recalled growing up in East Germany near the Polish border and of the "personal dream of freedom" she shared with Poles and the Solidarity movement.
"What others didn't manage, Solidarity did, leading a way to freedom for Europe. Poland opened the door to ending German division," she told a packed lecture theatre. "Without Solidarity, my life would have been different, and I wouldn't be standing before you as chancellor of Germany."
She drew a clear line from that struggle in the 1980s to the future of the EU, telling her audience that "working together doesn't call our national identity into question but, on the contrary, strengthens it".
It is solidarity - or lack thereof - that has been the trademark of many disputes between Poland and other EU member states. Western European countries are unhappy with Poland's decision to host part of a new US missile defence system without consulting EU and Nato allies.
Warsaw sees this as hypocritical considering how it had used its veto to force greater solidarity from other EU member states on Russia's ban on Polish meat imports. Polish officials see a similar lack of solidarity from Berlin in plans to build an undersea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, bypassing Poland and leaving it open to Kremlin political games over energy supplies.
Dr Merkel offered only general aspirations on these rows, saying that "every country in the union has to be able to depend on this solidarity".
"Europe can never allow itself to be split, in economic or energy questions," she said. "Neither can Europe allow itself to be divided on security questions. Divided security would be defective security." After her speech Dr Merkel and her husband - a rare guest on official visits - flew with President Lech Kaczynski and his wife to the state guest house on the Baltic coast.
The priority for Dr Merkel during meetings today is to ease Polish concern with new voting weights in the constitutional treaty and its preference for a deal similar to the current Nice Treaty voting system.
With an eye on the constitution, Dr Merkel told her audience in Warsaw that the EU had 50 years' experience of compromises "where no one has to lose face".
"Poland will not block the constitutional treaty, the voting system is just a negotiation tool it will give up in exchange for something else," said Piotr Kaczynski, analyst at the Institute for Public Affairs.
Finally, in a thinly veiled reference to the anti-gay views of many government politicians in Poland, Dr Merkel reminded her audience that Europe was a "continent of tolerance . . . that understands variety not as a threat but as enrichment".