Karol Nawrocki, Poland’s newly elected president, is anticipated to dam Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-EU reform agenda and provide recent impetus to rightwing populists throughout the continent.
In a slim run-off victory on Sunday, Nawrocki — a historian and political newcomer representing the nationalist Legislation and Justice (PiS) get together — defeated Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate backed by Tusk’s centre-right Civic Coalition, with a vote margin of lower than 2 per cent.
Nawrocki’s win is more likely to exacerbate tensions between the presidency and authorities, scuppering a judicial overhaul that Tusk had pledged in 2023 in return for Brussels releasing billions of EU funds that had been frozen throughout a rule of legislation dispute with the earlier PiS authorities.
Nawrocki, an novice boxer and self-confessed soccer hooligan from Gdańsk who has by no means held elected workplace, is anticipated to be extra combative than outgoing President Andrzej Duda, one other PiS nominee who often used his veto rights to dam Tusk’s payments.
“He will probably be a lot worse for Tusk than Duda,” mentioned Adam Leszczyński, director of the Gabriel Narutowicz Institute of Political Thought, a government-affiliated think-tank.
“He’s way more excessive in his views and he’s coming into this presidency with a whole lot of resentment, after actually getting a really private beating from Tusk and his allies throughout the marketing campaign.”
Nawrocki’s win is a giant defeat for Tusk, whose personal return to energy lower than two years in the past was hailed by many as a breakthrough that will restore Warsaw’s standing within the EU at a time when Russia was waging the biggest armed battle on European soil because the second world struggle.
However the presidential race has revealed how Tusk’s premiership has didn’t paper over divisions in a extremely polarised society, as radical candidates on each ends of the political spectrum fared higher than anticipated within the first spherical, endorsed specifically by youthful voters.
The Polish vote was additionally a uncommon victory for the Maga motion overseas, after rightwing politicians emulating US President Donald Trump had been defeated in elections in Canada, Australia and most lately Romania. It got here earlier than different key votes in central Europe, with Eurosceptic billionaire Andrej Babiš hoping to return as Czech prime minister this autumn, in addition to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Europe’s longest-serving prime minister, who’s each a Trump and Russia ally and is in search of re-election subsequent yr.
“You now have contained in the EU one other chief decided to sabotage many issues,” mentioned Leszczyński. “Nawrocki shares Orbán’s mindset, however with extra aggression and fewer [negotiation] expertise.”
Whereas Nawrocki had solely briefly met Trump within the run-up to the election, among the US president’s prime officers had been dispatched to Poland for a Conservative Political Motion Convention there final week.
US homeland safety secretary Kristi Noem endorsed Nawrocki at that convention, calling on Poles to “elect the best chief” and describing his rival Trzaskowski as “an absolute practice wreck”.
“You can be the leaders that can flip Europe again to conservative values,” Noem mentioned.
Sunday’s consequence can be a private victory for Jarosław Kaczyński, the 75-year-old PiS founder and long-standing Tusk nemesis who handpicked Nawrocki, 42, a comparatively unknown determine who led Poland’s Institute of Nationwide Remembrance.
Nawrocki is ready to offer “a extra radical and uncompromising presidency than Duda’s, probably resulting in an much more far-right authorities . . . than PiS ever was”, mentioned Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw bureau of the European Council on Overseas Relations.
Sunday’s consequence confirmed that “the far-right, anti-EU, pro-Trump forces are stickier and extra entrenched than many observers assumed”, mentioned Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington College.
“The battle pitting liberal internationalists towards pro-Trump, pro-Orbán populists is being joined, and Poland is without doubt one of the extra vital battlegrounds in what is probably going a generational battle inside the world’s main democracies.”
Nawrocki’s marketing campaign gained momentum after he sealed a pact with Sławomir Mentzen of the far-right Confederation get together, who received almost 15 per cent of votes within the first spherical. Their settlement included pledges to oppose tax will increase and shield gun possession rights — priorities designed to enchantment to Confederation’s libertarian base.
Nawrocki’s victory got here regardless of fierce criticism for a sequence of non-public scandals and alleged ties to criminals — accusations he denied. Kaczyński mentioned on Sunday that his candidate had efficiently navigated “a Niagara of lies”.
In contrast, Trzaskowski, a former authorities minister and member of the European parliament, was seen as an skilled candidate who had solely narrowly misplaced to Duda within the presidential election in 2020.
However Trzaskowski struggled to flee Tusk’s shadow, notably over his authorities’s failure to enact promised reforms, together with reversing a near-total ban on abortion that was launched beneath PiS and maintained partly due to disagreements inside Tusk’s coalition, which incorporates some socially conservative lawmakers.
Tusk acknowledged his authorities’s shortcomings and issued a uncommon apology within the last mass rally in Warsaw per week earlier than the run-off — a gesture analysts say got here too late.
Opinion polls had proven Trzaskowski within the lead all through the marketing campaign, however Nawrocki caught up along with his rival, narrowing the hole to only two proportion factors within the first spherical. Sunday’s upset victory is ready to embolden voices inside PiS pushing for early parliamentary elections and will create recent tensions inside Tusk’s unwieldy ruling coalition.
Earlier than the run-off, Tusk dominated out snap elections. However Dorota Piontek, a political scientist at Adam Mickiewicz College in Poznań, mentioned there would now most likely be “a play for early elections and the takeover of energy by PiS and Confederation, which suggests a battle with the EU and a weakening of Poland’s place”.
