OROHUSK, Poland � The message here at this gleaming
new border post overlooking the thickly forested banks of the Bug River is
that Poland is ready.
Inside a spotless weapons room is a rack of snub-nosed Glauberyt
automatic pistols, a Polish version of the famous Uzi. There are
9-millimeter pistols, boxes of bullets, two submachine guns and night
vision goggles inside green canvas kits.
Outside is a Land Rover, motorcycles and two dogs trained to follow
tracks in the woods. Not seen, but also available to protect this stretch
of the 327-mile border between Poland and Ukraine, are snowmobiles, a
helicopter and a patrol plane.
Just about all of it is provided by the European Union, which Poland
will join on May 1 with nine other countries.
"Of course, we understand that this will be the border of Western
Europe," said Lt. Col. Andrej Wojcik, commander of the newly strengthened
Polish Border Guards in this area. He has 1,500 men and women under his
command.
Given its way, Poland would probably not be fortifying its eastern
borders quite to this extent. Poles and others are concerned about
creating what some people here call a new Iron Curtain, or a new Rio
Grande, between it and its former allies in the Soviet bloc, namely
Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, exacerbating tensions around who is on the
inside and who is left out of the new Europe.
But fearful of the smuggling of people and contraband, current European
Union states in Western Europe made a tightly controlled border one of
many conditions that Poles had to fulfill for membership. The looming
question now is whether it will become an economic and ideological divide
as well.
"There was a belief that hordes of
illegal migrants are waiting outside our borders and that our controls
were inefficient," said Jan Trusczynski, Poland's chief European Union
negotiator.
"We had to confront this type of thinking, that Poland's borders were
more dangerous than other European borders," Mr. Trusczynski said, "which
means that we had to beef up resources and investment along our Eastern
frontier."
Europe's own eastern frontier has shifted throughout its history, and
it is shifting once again. This time, the new border of Europe � defined
by the soon-to-be-25-member European Union � will be several hundred miles
farther east.
"It's a historic moment," Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer,
said. "It will be the first time in modern history that Germany will be
the center of Europe, without direct threats to our border and without us
threatening anybody."
The change is equally historic for Poland. "Poland will no longer be
between two big nations, Germany and Russia, which was always a dangerous
situation, but in a union with many other nations who will be partners,"
said Jerzy Holzer, director of the Institute for Politics of the Polish
Academy of Science.
In many ways the new border arrangements, not just for Poland but for
all the new members, promise to be more complicated than before.
There will be a transition period of probably several years during
which the old borders of the Europe Union and the new ones will remain,
streamlined but not eliminated.
For the foreseeable future, Poles will be able to cross into Germany
without a visa. But there will still be a border post, and Poles will be
allowed to stay for only a limited period, probably about three months.
Worried about low-cost labor flooding in, several countries, including
Germany, have announced restrictions on job seekers from the new states
for several years.
In other words, there will remain what one German writer, Roland
Freudenstein, has called "a frontier of poverty," though it is a frontier,
he has written, with a good chance of disappearing.
This will be the new border between Europe and non-Europe, defined in
many ways by religion and shared political and cultural values. (Poland is
mostly Catholic, for instance, while the Orthodox church begins to
dominate to the east.)
Along this border, controls and surveillance will not be loosened but,
at least for now, intensified.
The line here in Dorohusk on the Bug River is visible already � a red
strip painted across a green trestle bridge where vehicles waited.
An electrician from the Ukrainian town of Lutsk (pronounced Woosk) said
he was waiting to get building materials in Poland and was untroubled by
the new visa requirements.
"There's a Polish Consulate in Lutsk," he said, "and it only took me a
day to get a visa."
But in another car, a man and a woman who gave their names as Sergei
and Larissa from Luboml, Ukraine, were bitter.
"There's no work in the Ukraine," Larissa said, "so for us it's going
to be very hard."
