The European Union is not too worried about a government coalition which Poland's ruling right plans to form with a fringe leftist group that once campaigned for anti-EU policies, officials said on Tuesday.
The executive European Commission's main concern will be to ensure the planned coalition does not lead the cabinet of Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz astray from sound fiscal policies and respect for central bank independence, they said.
Marcinkiewicz's Law and Justice party clinched a draft coalition deal last week with Self-Defence led by firebrand Andrzej Lepper, who built his early political career on protests against free market reforms and an anti-EU stance.
"Marcinkiewicz enjoys a certain credit of trust in the EU. The Commission is likely to react calmly to a coalition with Lepper," said a Commission official, asking not to be named.
The EU executive would not comment officially on the emerging coalition in the biggest of the 10 mostly ex-communist countries that joined the EU in 2004.
The increasingly nationalistic rhetoric of Poland's ruling conservatives, who now lead a minority government, and repeated attacks on the autonomy of the central bank have drawn criticism from Brussels in recent weeks.
But Lepper's entry into the government, possibly to become a deputy prime minister and farm minister, is unlikely to change Warsaw's policies much, especially since his recent statements show more pragmatism than radicalism, the official said.
Lepper, a former pig farmer, once called Poland's internationally respected central bank chief Leszek Balcerowicz "a scoundrel and an economic bandit" and warned that EU entry would be a big blow to the country's agriculture.
Another official said the EU had learned to avoid strong reactions to member states' national politics since a temporary boycott of high-level contacts with the Austrian government in 2000 after nationalist Joerg Haider joined the ruling coalition backfired on Vienna's partners.
"The EU burned its fingers on Haider and does not want to repeat this mistake," the official said.
Brussels would be very worried if the Polish coalition loosened fiscal policy or parliament approved a bill sponsored by Lepper to limit the National Bank of Poland's independence.
But pro-reform Finance Minister Zyta Gilowska is seen as a the best guarantor that that will not occur, the official said.
The Commission would be more worried if Law and Justice had reached a coalition deal with the League of Polish Families, another fringe group which has a reputation among many EU diplomats as nationalistic and anti-Semitic, he said.
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