Wealth & Money Quote by Aleksander Kwasniewski

Kwasniewski’s line has the blunt, managerial cadence of a post-Cold War leader selling history as policy. “To be in the EU” isn’t framed as romance or destiny; it’s framed as compliance. The telling phrase is “same rules”: membership is not a badge, it’s a regime of standards that reaches beyond tariffs into “social life.” That breadth is the point. He’s normalizing the EU as an everyday governance system, not an abstract club, and quietly signaling that the transformation required is domestic as much as diplomatic.

The ellipsis and halting syntax read like someone translating a strategic argument into plain speech: integration equals predictability. For a country like Poland in the late 1990s and early 2000s, that predictability was the product. “Same rules” reassures investors and Western partners that reforms aren’t cosmetic; they’re locked in by external constraints. It also preempts a nationalist objection: sovereignty isn’t being “lost” so much as pooled under a shared rulebook that prevents backsliding.

“Together in the majority of European countries” carries another subtext: EU accession is an act of belonging, a return to Europe after decades of Soviet orbit. Yet he chooses “majority,” not “all,” acknowledging dissenters and opt-outs while still presenting membership as the norm. It’s the rhetoric of the waiting room: to join is to stop being the exception. In that light, the quote works less as inspiration than as a calm warning: entry comes with rules, and those rules will remake you.