Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Poland has more to lose from this than Hungary does, but it’s happy to let Hungary feel the heat for impeding Ukraine’s plans, unless Orban is ousted next spring and Poland is then compelled to replace its role.

The EU is making a renewed push to speedily grant Ukraine membership as suggested by two recent news items.

The first relates to Politico’s report about a proposal for granting countries membership without veto rights till after the bloc overhauls its functions, which Ukraine hopes will be agreed to by December, while the second involves Bloomberg’s report about the bloc’s plans to include a rapid path to membership for Ukraine a part of its 12-point peace proposal. Poland might impede all of this though.

Observers should remember that Poland and Ukraine were embroiled in a fierce grain dispute throughout most of 2023. It was caused by the bloc temporarily removing tariffs on a number of Ukrainian exports after the start of the special operation. The influx of cheap grain into the Polish market threatened to ruin the livelihoods of Polish farmers, who began blocking the border in protest. The state then imposed an embargo on Ukrainian grain in defiance of the EU that still remains in place to this day.

The dispute has abated since then, with the latest EU-Ukrainian trade agreement imposing a tariff-rate quota on the latter’s wheat exports that’s 80% lower than what the former imported last year (1.3 million metric tons vs. 6.4 million metric tons), with tariffs beyond that being prohibitively expensive. Nevertheless, just as the influx of cheap grain from Ukraine ended, there’s now an influx of cheap steel into the Polish market that Warsaw recently declared that it also wants to ban or severely regulate.

The abovementioned concerns would reach crisis proportions with far-reaching socio-economic and political consequences for Poland if Ukraine were to speedily join the EU’s single market even without veto rights. It’s due in large part to growing public awareness of the aforesaid that only 35% of Poles support Ukrainian membership in the bloc as of a credible poll conducted in their country over the summer, which is less than the 85% who were in favor of this shortly after the special operation began.

Hungary has hitherto been portrayed by Western media as the main stumbling block to Ukraine’s plans, a role that Poland’s ruling duopoly has been all too happy to let it play for self-serving political reasons even though their country is arguably a much greater stumbling block for the reasons explained above. Moreover, there’s a chance that the EU- and Ukrainian-backed efforts to meddle in Hungary’s next elections in April could finally oust Prime Minister Viktor Orban, thus removing him from the equation.

In that scenario, all eyes would then be on Poland, but neither half of its ruling duopoly wants to be blamed for the domestic consequences of Ukraine joining the EU, especially not ahead of fall 2027’s next parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling liberal-globalist coalition is already facing an uphill battle and would torpedo any hope of keeping control if they supported this, while President Karol Nawrocki from the conservative-nationalist opposition would betray his base if he went along with them.

Unlike Hungary, Poland hasn’t been smeared as a Russian puppet, the claim of which would fall flat anyhow since it spent 4.9% of its GDP on Ukraine (mostly for its refugees), donated its entire stockpile to it, and spends more of its GDP on defense than any NATO member. It’s happy to let Hungary feel the heat for now when it comes to impeding Ukraine’s speedy membership in the EU, but if Orban is ousted next spring, then Poland will likely step up and replace its role since failing to do so would be disastrous.