Germans ain't so scary after all

Twenty years ago, merely three percent of Poles thought Poland had no enemies. Today, that view is shared by 20 percent of those surveyed, daily Rzeczpospolita happily reports. The biggest change occurred in the public image of Germans, who were seen as a threat by 88 percent of Poles in 1990. Today, that number has dropped to less than 14 percent. The "phasing out" of national fears is going pretty well for a country "with a bitter history of partitions, bloody wars against Hitler and Stalin, and a degrading communist regime controlled by Moscow," the paper’s op-ed piece reads. Poles feel more confident. "'Polnische Wirtschaft' is now the only economy in Europe that avoided recession, Polish troops are doing better than their German colleagues in Afghanistan, and life in Warsaw or Poznań is by no means worse than the one in Berlin or Munich." All this does not mean that Polish-German relations are a picnic – the chief differences remain, like the building of the Nord Stream gas pipeline or the Centre Against Expulsions. "But since we are not afraid of them anymore, let us speak openly and directly about what is bothering us. And let us finally beat them at football," the daily concludes.