As the European Union prepares to welcome new members from central and eastern Europe, citizens in the region's biggest state are getting cold feet about joining. An opinion poll this week showed that, for the first time, fewer than 50 per cent of Poles want to join the EU.
Support for EU membership has nose-dived from 64 per cent in February last year, when entry negotiations began, to just 46 per cent today.
Poland's foreign minister, Mr Bronislaw Geremek, described the decline in support as alarming and said it must be countered by a government programme of "information and persuasion".
The cabinet is considering a proposal to spend £9 million on an information campaign to convince Poles that EU membership is in the country's national interest.
Some observers question the reliability of the latest poll but most agree that fewer than half of Poland's 40 million inhabitants are persuaded that their future would be brighter inside the EU. People living in rural areas are most likely to oppose membership, while young, educated, city-dwellers tend to favour joining.
Many of Poland's 2.5 million farmers fear that they will be driven off the land by the EU, which wants to reduce the number of holdings to 700,000. The average Polish farm comprises just 16 acres - a quarter of the size of the average Irish farm.
Coal miners also fear that joining the EU could spell the end of their industry and workers in the state-owned steel industry are anxious about the effect of privatisation on their jobs.
But much of the popular disenchantment with the EU may be on account of unpopular reforms in health, education and pensions, which many Poles believe to be inspired by the EU.
Support for the centre-right government of the prime minister, Mr Jerzy Buzek, has fallen to an all-time low, with just 13 per cent of the public supporting his tough economic measures.
Poland's economy has been one of the success stories of central Europe since the collapse of communism 10 years ago, but growth has been slowing in recent years. Poland's politicians have been slow to explain to the public that the long-term benefits of EU membership may outweigh the hardship involved in the short term and that most of the unpopular reforms in such industries as agriculture and mining are inevitable, even if Poland stays outside the EU.
Warsaw insists that it will be ready to join the EU by the end of 2002, but few experts agree. Most foreign investors and diplomats believe that 2005 is a more likely date for entry.
As Poland's political leaders reassure voters that they will only join the EU "on Poland's terms", some existing EU members may be quite content to delay enlargement for a few years longer. Germany, traditionally Poland's most powerful champion in Brussels, has gone lukewarm on expanding the EU and may seize on Polish indifference to the project as an excuse to slow down enlargement.
Poland's pro-Europeans fear that if no date for entry is agreed at the Helsinki summit in December the momentum for enlargement could stall. If they wish to avoid such a development, they must first persuade the Polish people of the case for Europe.