Ages ago I gave an interview to the Krakow Post which has suddenly popped out into the open:

KP: Which states are Poland’s natural allies in the European Union and which will are its rivals?

CC: I tend to fear that on EU issues, Poland and the UK will end up being not as close as they might be, since Poland has a strategic interest in getting lots of EU money and will soon get hooked on CAP [Common Agricultural Policy] payments. This means that Poland could tend to fall in behind France as an opponent of radical reform to the EU budget process, a pity since the levels of waste in policies like these are morally unsustainable and undermine overall EU effectiveness.

Poland’s “rivals” for EU funds will tend to be those countries in southern Europe which have wasted vast sums of EU money and now are in serious structural difficulties. Poland should be at the forefront in insisting on hard and painful reforms in such countries as a price for further collective support, and more generally in seeking less wasteful EU spending.

KP: If you could be absolute ruler of Poland for a day, what decrees would you issue?

CC: Easy. Take all TV/radio out of party politics once and for all. Open all former communist archives once and for all. Ban the ridiculous circle/triangle business for restaurant WCs. That should do it.

That last point, by the way, for the benefit of non-Polish readers refers to the bizarre Polish tradition of adorning the doors of WCs in restaurants and other such places with only either a brass circle or a brass triangle, and leaving it to the obscene imagination of foreigners to guess which is Ladies and which Gents.