Trying times for an untried diplomat.

last updated 8 January 2015

Poland

Slawomir Popowski

Poland’s first female foreign minister has a tough slog ahead of her, said Slawomir Popowski in Warsaw’s Rzeczpospolita. Anna Fotyga is a former European Parliament member, but her main claim to fame is being one of President Lech Kacynski’s closest advisors. She has almost no foreign policy experience, and now she’s taking on a ministry that, under the Law and Justice government, has been woefully inadequate. It “failed to convince Brussels to take a harder line against Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka” for his persecution of his country’s Polish minority. It also got nowhere promoting Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz’s idea of an “energy alliance” along the lines of NATO. But her biggest challenge is simply to define Poland’s foreign policy. Poland has been ping-ponging between those who want to bolster the U.S. relationship and those who emphasize the European relationship. Then there are the Euroskeptics, who argue that “a country that has barely recovered its sovereignty” must not subsume itself into the “German-dominated” E.U. meta-state so quickly. It was “courageous of Fotyga to accept the nomination.” Let’s “hope she shows similar courage” as she tackles the job.