[Interview] Former Polish president Lech Wałęsa: ‘What we have right now is not really a democracy’

Forty-six years after climbing the gates of the Gdańsk shipyard and helping to bring down communism, former Polish president Lech Wałęsa warns history has a habit of repeating itself – and there are lessons to be learned. In an exclusive interview with EUobserver, he returns to how, after the fall of communism, modern civilisation is approaching the same point of collapse that doomed the great civilisations of the past. “We are vulnerable to collapse,” he says. “It could happen to us as well.” The trade unionist, who became a Nobel peace laureate in 1983, speaks with the instincts of a shop-floor organiser rather than a retired statesman. His arguments arrive in sweeping arcs, skipping between biblical references, ancient Egypt, Cold War geopolitics and family anecdotes, all in pursuit of a single idea: humanity has outgrown the nation state. For Wałęsa, the crisis confronting Europe is not simply one of populism or democratic backsliding. It is structural. Technology has transformed the world faster than politics has adapted. “Our upbringing is still prepared for the old technologies, not for the new ones,” he says, arguing that “we have not managed to organise ourselves at a level suitable for the current technological development of the world.” “What we have right now is not really a democracy,” he says. Political parties, he argues, have become self-perpetuating bureaucracies rather than vehicles for public representation. The media environment has transformed public trust, exposing politicians' failures while amplifying demagogues. Democracy, designed to elevate the most capable leaders, increasingly rewards the loudest performers instead. "[But] democracy is choosing bad people — populists and demagogues," he warns, arguing that every elected office should be limited to two terms of no more than five years. Voters, he says, should have meaningful powers of recall. Political finance should be fully transparent. Restore accountability, he argues, and public trust may return. But fail to do so, and democracy risks being hollowed out from within. “In this world you cannot build an ideal state. But we could work towards that ideal democratic state,” he says. Lech Wałęsa is a Polish labour activist, politician, and 1983 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. He was the co-founder and leader of the Solidarity (Solidarność) movement in the 1980s. He became a central figure in the struggle against communist rule in Poland, helping to lead the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. Wałęsa played a key role in Poland’s transition to democracy in 1989. He served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995. His legacy remains tied to the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the broader democratic transformations of the late 20th century. No trust Borders, national governments and traditional political parties all belong, he says, to a previous era. The task now is to construct institutions capable of governing a continent and perhaps the world. “We reached a point where nobody trusts another nation,” he says, and then added: “all the old structures from the past, the old political parties and the old structures of society, are no longer suitable for the times we live in.” After the victory of the Solidarity labour union in Poland in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Europe, he believes, initially understood where history was heading. Borders came down. Germany was reunited. The euro was introduced. Integration gathered pace, and Europe gained peace. But now, the momentum has stalled. Laureates of the European Order of Merit were honoured at the European Parliament in Strasbourg in May 2026. Lech Walesa is the fifth from the right. Source: European Parliament. “We thought it would be relatively simple. Once we achieved freedom and democracy, we believed everything would be fine,” Wałęsa explained, acknowledging that instead “the old era was dirty and full of deceit,” which still has consequences. At 82, Wałęsa remains one of Europe's greatest political leaders. In May, the European Parliament awarded him its Order of Merit, recognising his role in Europe's democratic transformation. The medals, he insists, are beside the point. "I didn't do it for medals," he says. "I believed it was just, and that one should really fight for freedom." Yet those values, he believes, are under strain. We are absolutely not learning Wałęsa’s vision is unapologetically federalist. “We have to help each country, each nation to work for all of us. We have to invent structures that could use the best abilities of every one [country] of us,” he says, explaining that the “European Union should be rising above Europe.”