Poland’s presidential election a crucial test for Tusk’s pro-European government

Brussels – A year and a half after Donald Tusk returned to lead the government, Poland will go to the polls on Sunday, 18 May, to elect a new president to succeed the conservative Andrzej Duda. On one side is the capital’s mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski, a pro-European supported by the prime minister’s Civic Coalition; on the other is the historian and Trump admirer Karol Nawrocki, supported by the nationalists of Law and Justice (PiS). The dangerous outsider is Slawomir Mentzen, a multimillionaire businessman and member of the far-right Confederation party.

With only a few hours to go before election silence begins, the favourite is Trzaskowski—polls put him at 32 per cent, followed by Nawrocki at 23 per cent and Mentzen at 14 per cent. Behind them are ten other minor candidates, including Adrian Zandberg of the left-wing Razem (Together) party, Szymon Holownia of the centre-right Poland 2025 party, and Magdalena Biejat of the New Left (Nowa Lewica), the left wing of Tusk’s governing coalition. Given by polls between 5 and 8 per cent, their voters could play a decisive role in the event of a runoff between the two top-ranked candidates.

In fact, the second round, possibly scheduled for June 1, appears almost a foregone conclusion. At stake, barring a Mentzen exploit, will be the two parties that have dominated the country’s political scene for the past two decades and who currently hold the posts of head of government and head of state. Precisely in light of the possible coexistence between a president and a prime minister of different political colours—a lame duck—and the important prerogatives that the Polish constitutional arrangement entrusts to the president, Sunday’s vote assumes crucial importance for Tusk’s government and for the pro-European premier’s hopes of implementing his reform agenda.

In Poland, the president, in addition to being commander-in-chief of the armed forces and leading foreign policy, can directly influence the legislative process through the power of veto, which can only be overridden by a parliamentary vote with a three-fifths majority and in the presence of at least half of the deputies. Thus, the coalition led by Tusk’s centrist party, which came into government in December 2023 with a promise to dismantle the controversial judicial and anti-rule-of-law reforms carried out by the previous PiS government, has so far met with resistance from Duda.

Just as Duda has given his blessing to all the measures taken by the government of Mateusz Morawiecki, who succeeded Giorgia Meloni at the head of the European Conservatives and Reformists party from 2019 to 2023, Trzaskowski would allow Tusk to proceed more expeditiously in implementing his agenda. The current mayor of Warsaw has come out openly, at least until his reelection in 2024, in favour of loosening abortion laws and protecting the rights of the LGBTIQ+ community. Two warhorses that have been sharply scaled back in this election campaign, in favour of increasing defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP and a hard punch against immigration.

Trzaskowski’s falling into line with the themes most dear to the nationalist right traces that of Tusk and, in general, the European People’s Party of which Tusk is one of the most charismatic leaders. And it is already a clear indication of what might happen in the likely runoff: on one side, the conservative electorate united in support of  Nawrocki or Mentzen and on the other, the governing coalition candidate trying to gain support from the right. At the same time, Trzaskowski risks alienating a part of the progressive electorate that was instrumental in Tusk’s victory only 18 months ago, particularly women and young people.

On the other hand, Nawrocki’s election campaign focused on the slogan “Poland first, Poles first.” Despite his pledge to maintain support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion, the former director of the World War II Museum in Gdansk has lashed out against the benefits granted to refugees and against foreigners and migrants in general: he wants Warsaw’s withdrawal from the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum (on closer inspection, Tusk himself recently suspended the right to asylum because of the “hybrid threat” from Belarus), as well as the abolition of the Green Deal. In line with PiS’s positions, he is strongly critical of granting more rights to the LGBTIQ+ community. Mentzen is similarly against abortion and migrants, but decidedly more Eurosceptic. Very popular on social media, he promised voters “a strong and rich Poland” with low taxes and closed borders.

The candidate of the far-right Confederation party, Slawomir Mentzen (Photo by Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP)

The vote will be closely watched in Brussels, where Poland, with Tusk’s government, is back playing a leading role after years of close ties with Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. Also, in Strasbourg, the Council of Europe, in early April, had raised serious concerns about the integrity and security of the electoral process. An observation mission of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly is once again in Poland to monitor the course of the election day.