The European Union is fighting with the Polish government over a common concept of democracy and law.

The conflict simmered for a long time, now it could spiral out of control.

The national conservatives under Jaroslaw Kaczynski are pushing ahead with their operation to subjugate the judiciary, although the European Court of Justice has condemned their course several times.

Now the Commission is threatening fines that the leadership in Warsaw could hardly accept without seeing it as a capitulation.

In the film this is called "Mexican Standoff": Nobody wants to give in, nobody can win.

The EU has always been a protective alliance

The EU and Poland are driving towards a bad election.

On the one hand, a united Europe cannot tolerate any member in its midst who does not recognize the rule of law.

At its core, the EU has always been a protective alliance of democracies in a world full of totalitarian danger.

It has that in common with NATO.

Only in the second place is it everything else that defines it: a common market, a geopolitical power factor, an area of ​​social redistribution.

It lives from the common conviction, which is always and everywhere the basis of existence of democracy: that the freedom of each individual can only survive if he joins forces with others who think like him against the overwhelming power of the despots.

This applies to states as well as to individuals.

In the original democratic myths from the Rütli oath to the “common ground of the democrats” in the German post-war period, the mutual promise of support against tyranny plays a central role, and German history also shows it: Democracy fails when there are tepid people, cynics or fanatics in their midst get out of hand.

That is why there can be no place in Europe for countries in which the commitment to democracy and law is not a majority consensus.

If this consensus falls in Poland, there will be no future in the Union.

A geopolitical nightmare

On the other hand, the idea of ​​an unconnected Poland drifting between Central Europe and the Russian sphere of influence is a geopolitical nightmare.

In the long run Poland would then become the scene of a struggle for influence between Moscow and the power that is currently setting the tone in the West.

This competition would not be new historically, and it has repeatedly led to disasters.

Twice in the last 225 years Poland has been completely divided by its neighbors.

Today one only fears the Polexit, but then something much more drastic was concrete reality: the Polexitus, the Finis Poloniae.

Once, during World War II, the hegemonic struggle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union resulted not only in the bloody dismemberment of Poland, but also in the worst war in history.

Since then, Central Europe has enjoyed peace for so long that such prospects may seem unreal.

But stability is not a law of nature.

Russia has become expansive again.

Is it completely out of the question that one day aggressive power politicians will set the tone again in the West?

Trump was unimaginable before Trump came.

Who says that a Trump will one day not dictate the direction in Europe, maybe even in Germany?

Then the power competition could escalate in an East without a structure.

Poland cannot stay in the EU if it stays the course it is today.

That's one thing.

The other is: His exit would be a misfortune.

Reason still has a chance.

But time is running out.