There is a sense of déjà vu about the victory of Trump-endorsed, nationalist right-winger Karol Nawrocki in Sunday’s Polish presidential election. Polish voters had decided last year to replace the conservative and Eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) government with a coalition led by Donald Tusk’s liberal centrist Civic Union (CU). However, at the weekend they voted by the narrowest of margins – 50.9 per cent to 49.9per cent - in favour of the PiS retaining the presidential office. The outgoing president Andrzej Duda repeatedly used his right to veto much of Tusk’s reformist agenda.
A key area has been the reform of the judicial system ,where wholesale manipulation by the former PiS government had seen Poland leading Hungary into a major confrontation with its European allies over their determination to protect the rule of law. Hungary was unsurprisingly the first country to congratulate Nawrocki.
Now, if Nawrocki is successful in blocking EU-required reforms, he may well also undermine Warsaw’s attempts to restore billions of withheld EU funding.
In 2020, Duda had won the presidency, defeating Nawrocki’s opponent, liberal pro-EU mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski, by a similar margin to the weekend vote. The deep, urban-rural, conservative-liberal divisions that have riven Polish society seem not to have healed an inch, and the PiS views Sunday’s election as a harbinger of its return to power in government in 2027.
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Now the prospect is for legislative gridlock that will delight not only fellow EU populist parties but seriously undermine Poland’s emerging leadership role in the EU. It comes just two weeks after the defeat in Romania of a populist candidate, George Simion, which many over-optimistically felt suggested the ebbing of the tide of populism.
Nawrocki, a historian , amateur boxer and former football hooligan with no political experience, vigorously denied an avalanche of allegations against him during a campaign he fought under a slogan of “Poland First”. He attacked EU policies on climate change, Ukraine’s Nato accession, and promised to torpedo attempts to promote LGBTQ+ rights and more liberal abortion laws. “We will save Poland, we will not allow the power of Donald Tusk to be complete,” he promised as word of the result came in.
The Polish constitution limits the presidency to largely ceremonial duties. However, the president can obstruct – and holds a veto on legislation which can only be overturned on a now-elusive three-fifths majority vote of parliament.
Poland faces in to a prolonged period of polarised confrontation, unable to move forwards or backwards politically, and one that will certainly hobble the EU’s efforts at a critical time. And Nawrocki’s victory is telling evidence of the continued resilience of populism and nationalism.
