Here in powerful fluent form is Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, speaking today in Berlin about Europe and the Eurozone.

If anyone can find a better peacetime speech by any Polish Foreign Minister or any Polish politician ever, let it be produced!

Not that it is perfect. Too many rather impenetrable statistics at various point. Some sentences are too long or involved.

He even – horror – takes a populist swipe at the UK (bear in mind the German audience and his own credentials as an Oxford graduate), after saying something important about ‘subsidiarity’. Note how he abruptly switches to talking to the UK in the second person, as if we were in the room. Fine technique:

The more power and legitimacy we give to federal institutions, the more secure

member states should feel that certain prerogatives, everything to do with national

identity, culture, religion, lifestyle, public morals, and rates of income, corporate and

VAT taxes, should forever remain in the purview of states. Our unity can survive

different working hours or different family law in different countries.

Which brings me to the issue of whether an important member, Britain, can support reform. You have given the Union its common language. The Single Market was largely your brilliant idea. A British commissioner runs our diplomacy. You could lead Europe on defence. You are an indispensable link across the Atlantic.

On the other hand, Eurozone’s collapse would hugely harm your economy. Also, your total sovereign, corporate and household debt exceeds 400% of GDP. Are you sure markets will always favour you? We would prefer you in, but if you can’t join, please allow us to forge ahead. And please start explaining to your people that European decisions are not Brussels’ diktats but results of agreements in which you freely participate.

Fine, forge ‘ahead’ as you see fit. But pay for it yourselves. Don’t expect too much British money if you overdo it. And don’t try taxing us by the back door.

Nor is it easy to see from an admittedly befogged UK point of view how giving a turbo-boost to more powers at the European level as Sikorski suggests is in any meaningful way compatible with democracy as hitherto understood. More power to … the European Parliament? No thanks. (Remember that one? Follow the link to see a German TV station doing a very early job to magnificent effect…)

Above all, isn’t a wholesale reorganisation of  EU powers lunging in a Far More Europe way as Sikorski suggests completely unrealistic? How to negotiate a new treaty structure of such far-reaching new measures without the whole business getting bogged down in referenda and hopeless controversy? It’s not by chance we have what we have. And German voters would have to be mad to allow other Europeans effectively to decide how much German money is transferred out of Germany for wider redistributive purposes.

Nonetheless, if you want to hear the message for More Europe delivered by a European foreign minister in a way calculated to impress an audience from another large member state, this is what it looks like.

This one passage – directed directly at Germany – is really good by any standard. Energetic and thoughtful, but also refeshingly blunt. An authentic contemporary rhetorical masterclass in delivering a tough message ("Listen, you helped get us all into this mess..!") to a foreign audience in their own country with style and grace.

Oh, but note too the hard-nosed Polish caveat tucked away at the end:

What does Poland ask of Germany?

We ask, first of all, that Germany admits that she is the biggest beneficiary of the current arrangements and therefore that she has the biggest obligation to make them sustainable.

Second, as you know best, you are not an innocent victim of others’ profligacy. You, who should have known better, have also broken the Growth and Stability Pact and your banks also recklessly bought risky bonds.

Third, because investors have been selling the bonds of exposed countries and flying to safety, your borrowing costs have been lower than they would have been in normal times.

Fourth, if your neighbours’ economies stall or implode, you greatly suffer, too.

Fifth, that despite your understandable aversion to inflation, you appreciate that the danger of collapse is now a much bigger threat.

Sixth, that because of your size and your history you have a special responsibility to preserve peace and democracy on the continent. Jurgen Habermas has wisely said that "If the European project fails, then there is the question of how long it will take to reach the status quo again. Remember the German Revolution of 1848: When it failed, it took us 100 years to regain the same level of democracy as before."

What, as Poland’s foreign minister, do I regard as the biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland today, on 28th November 2011? It’s not terrorism, it’s not the Taliban, and it’s certainly not German tanks. It’s not even Russian missiles which President Medvedev has just threatened to deploy on the EU’s border.

The biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland would be the collapse of the Euro zone. And I demand of Germany that, for your own sake and for ours, you help it survive and prosper. You know full well that nobody else can do it.

I will probably be first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity.

You have become Europe’s indispensable nation. You may not fail to lead. Not dominate, but to lead in reform. Provided you include us in decision-making, Poland will support you.

I like various Sikorskiesque personal style-touches, such as this feline one:

The Euro zone crisis is a more dramatic manifestation of the European malaise because

its founders created a system in which each of its members has the capacity to bring it

down, with appalling costs to themselves and the entire neighborhood.

 

The break up would be a crisis of apocalyptic proportions beyond our financial system.

Once the logic of ‘each man for himself’ takes hold, can we really trust everyone to act

communitarian and resist the temptation to settle scores in other areas, such as trade?

 

Would you really bet the house on the proposition that if the Euro zone breaks up, the

single market, the cornerstone of the European Union, will definitely survive? After all,

messy divorces are more frequent than amicable ones. I have heard of a case in

California in which a couple spent $100,000 disputing custody of the family cat.

And he ends on a note which somehow captures Radek Sikorski’s own swashbuckling approach to life:

Peoples in our neighborhood – both East and South – look to us for inspiration.

If we get our act together we can become a proper superpower. In an equal partnership with the United States, we can preserve the power, prosperity and leadership of the West.

But we are standing on the edge of a precipice. This is the scariest moment of my ministerial life but therefore also the most sublime. Future generations will judge us by what we do, or fail to do

Sublime! And sublime because it’s scary!? What’s he doing standing tall in the howling gale, right on the edge of that precipice, ignoring all the Health and Safety signs put up by Brussels?

What a word to describe being a European foreign minister at a time like this.

Bravo.