Poland and EU
Gosia Klatt, a doctoral candidate at the University of Melbourne, was invited by the Institute of European Democrats (IED) to conduct a series of interviews with Polish Members of the European Parliament (MEP) in Brussels and Warsaw in the period between October and December 2008. Using these interviews as its foundation, Gosia, Professor Stefan Auer and Dr Matt Killingsworth (from Latrobe University), have written a research article that explores the degree to which the ‘politics of memory’ influences the behaviour of Polish MEPs. The article discusses the ways in which Polish MEPs, through ‘educating’ the European Parliament about important Polish/European moments in history, reaffirm their own national identity while simultaneously promoting the need for European identity to be constructed in relation to Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
This article was also recently submitted to Europe-Asia Studies, a leading academic journal with a focus on the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The authors plan for this to the first of hopefully many collaborative efforts that explore different notions of European identity and belonging. It is also hoped that this article will encourage more research into the varying ways that the ‘politics of memory’ effects political decision making in the European Union