The chill winds of doubt over membership blow through Eastern bloc

Roman Giertych greets guests to his office with exquisite manners, offering tea and biscuits and making sure "ladies" are served first.

He is only 31 but this ambitious young member of Poland's Sejm (parliament) takes his history very seriously. On Mr Giertych' s desk are large tomes about von Ribbentrop, Hitler's Foreign Minister, and Nazi Germany's expansionist designs on Poland.

As president of the congress of a political party called the League of Polish Families, Mr Giertych is also one of the driving forces behind the campaign against Poland's accession to the European Union.

Enlargement, his theory goes, is a thinly disguised German plot to overrun Poland again. "Already the media in the north-west of Poland has been 90 per cent taken over by German interests," he says, "and we are seeing massive purchases of land by Germans taking advantage of prices 50 times lower than in Germany. We are afraid of a body which is so heavily influenced by Germany."

Mr Giertych's party, which appeals to a rural, right-wing, staunchly Catholic constituency, could be dismissed as part of the loony right. But as Ireland casts its vote on the Nice Treaty, the political élite in Warsaw and the capitals of other Central and Eastern European states are on edge.

Not just because they know an Irish "no" would derail the grand plan for 10 states to join in 2004. They also know a rejection would foster the undeniable winds of backlash against the EU blowing through the former Communist bloc. In the 15 states of the EU, only 51 per cent back enlargement eastward, while 30 per cent remain firmly opposed. But in Poland and its neighbours, in the impoverished Iron Curtain countries we thought were begging to be let in to our rich mans' club, millions are having second thoughts.

In 1994, 80 per cent of Poles wanted to join. Now, firm support is hovering at the mid-50 per cent mark. Enthusiasm remains highest in Bulgaria and Romania, the two former Communist states who will not be given entry in 2004.

So is it a case of the more people in the 10 incoming countries knowing about Brussels, the less they want to do with it?

Many of the eurosceptics have genuine concerns. Farmers are not impressed that they will be limited to 25 per cent of the agricultural subsidies paid to French German and Irish farmers. Poland, where the average income is about 40 per cent of the EU average, risks being a net contributor in its first year of membership.

And despite high unemployment at home, it will be many years before workers from the new states gain the right to work legally to countries like Germany or Belgium.

"We should be in Europe," Agneszka Maj, a 27-year-old shop assistant told me in Cracow, "but the terms don't seem very fair. We are being made to feel like second-class citizens."

For many, tales of Metric Martyrs and straight bananas have had the same inflammatory effect they have in Britain or Denmark. And now the Eastern Europeans have their own euromyths to whinge about. In Slovenia, the abolition of the beloved duty-free shops caused a major flap. In the Czech Republic there was an outcry worthy of Norman Tebbit when it emerged that EU regulations would put a stop to Czechs picking up unwrapped cakes with their bare hands in bakeries. Poland's negotiations have run into difficulties over such things as ear tags for calves.

Then there's the yawn factor. The educated élite in the ministries and newspaper offices of Eastern Europe are finding it difficult to sustain the lofty aims of enlargement in the public mind.

But as Piotr Stasinski, deputy editor of Gazeta Wyborcza, the biggest-selling Polish daily, says "People are bored with the story. But our editorial line is: stop this technical squabbling. We, and the Irish, need to remember we are talking about the history of the continent."