Poland’s new anti-EU and pro-Trump president is good news for neither Poland nor Europe. While currently Poland is a frontline state for NATO, a rising strategic European player, and an important partner for Ukraine, Germany, and France, this may not be the case moving forward.
In the second round of the presidential elections in Poland, held on Sunday 1 June, Karol Nawrocki, a conservative candidate backed by the nationalist conservative Law & Justice (PiS) party, won over a centrist, liberal, and pro-European Rafał Trzaskowski. The fight was razor-tight and brought a result of 50.89 percent of the vote for Nawrocki against 49.11 percent for Trzaskowski, with a record turnout of just over 71 percent.
Poland has been polarised for quite some time, but Sunday’s election showed how deep the rift goes. Never before has there been such a small difference in votes between candidates running for president—less than 370,000.
A former director of the Second World War Museum in Gdańsk (2017-2021) and head of the Institute of National Remembrance, Nawrocki became known as an autocratic manager eager to implement decisions as driven by his and the then right-wing government’s ideological views. While it should not be surprising that state-governed institutions investigating the past are susceptible to political influences, the fact that Nawrocki’s suspicious past did not trigger a deeper reflection among his electorate seems astonishing.
The electoral campaign exposed more unsettling information about the candidate than the average Pole would want to know. The facts about Nawrocki’s dubious past– his job as a security guard at a hotel in Gdańsk where he allegedly arranged sex workers for guests, his friendship groups including convicted criminals and people known within hooligan scenes and Neo-Nazi circles, and his participation in an organised hooligan brawl while working at the Institute of National Remembrance (or exploiting an elderly man to take ownership of his apartment)—should be alarming. Indeed, they should disqualify him from running for the most important position in the country.
This did not happen, and the revelations that transpired during the campaign did not discourage the voters who fell for Nawrocki’s slogan “Poland first, Poles first.” While the slogan sounds rather predictable in the context of a presidential campaign, what it stands for is not entirely clear. If a hooligan brawl is in Nawrocki’s words a “noble, masculine combat,” what can “Poland first” mean? Actually, Nawrocki’s campaign offers some clues. Rather than calling for a proud, patriotic solidarity, “Poland first” seems to imply division and exclusion; Poland does not need Europe, migrants, or to support “ungrateful” Ukrainians. And it will not advance its relationship with Germany without addressing wartime reparations. Instead, it obstinately defends close ties between the government and the Catholic Church, and normalises hostility towards LGBT+ communities.
That Nawrocki will be promoting division rather than acting as the role requires—as a conciliator—is quite certain. His self-styled mission is to block the liberal agenda.
The scenario is familiar. Donald Tusk’s government has been criticised for not delivering on their promises, especially restoring an independent judiciary and liberalising Poland’s restrictive abortion law. But these are the veto powers of the president, who has blocked the legislation, that have contributed to Tusk’s failure to deliver, as the outgoing PiS president Andrzej Duda has demonstrated. The incoming president’s promise to obstruct the government’s efforts, which may extend to vetoing the budget and forcing an early government election, cannot be taken lightly.
Whether this will motivate the current government to look for new and more effective solutions, as some optimists tentatively suggest, is a big question. For the time being, Tusk has called for a vote of confidence in his coalition government, taking a risk but also signalling that he is ready for a “new political reality.”
What can also be expected is a continuing and paralysing rivalry between the two parties. Neither sees the other as a partner for having productive discussions which, most likely, will deepen social polarisation, and weaken the government and the country.
This has direct consequences for Europe, which sees Poland as a growing strength when it comes to security, defence, and deeper EU integration—not only in the face of the threat from Russia, but also in a broader changing geopolitical context. The biggest challenge is not Nawrocki’s opposition to the EU’s Green Deal, Migration Pact or joint European debt instruments, nor his general anti-integrationist stance, but his open disregard for liberal democratic values, including disrespect for diversity and different views. With such challenges pilling up on the EU’s eastern borders additional strain will be forced on Europe which is already struggling with political instability and redefining itself in a multipolar world. Nawrocki’s mantra that “Poland must be great” does not sound reassuring in the context of deep social rifts that reduce trust and the effectiveness of rational arguments, and undermine Europe’s capacity for collective action.
Conclusion
While Poland is one of the most polarised countries in Europe, the trends we observe there are not isolated, but reflect broader political and cultural shifts. Poland is not the only country where we see that an accumulation of scandals does not damage one’s reputation but increases their popularity, that insular perspectives promote a sense of security, and that aggression boosts confidence and influence. Donald Trump and Nawrocki are not happening somewhere far away; global tendencies of favouring charisma over reasoning or “aura over meaning” should be our great concern too.
Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams is Deputy Director at the Centre for European Studies, Australian National University. Ka************@*****du.au
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.
