.jpeg)
Analysis
Donald
Tusk’s Polish revival masks deeper divisions with German neighbours
Jennifer
Rankin
in Brussels
Warsaw’s
return to the European mainstream with presidency of the EU Council may not be
quite what it seems
Mon 30 Dec
2024 06.00 CET
Germany’s
chancellor appears to be heading for defeat; France’s president is mired in
crisis. But while Europe’s traditional power duo are in the doldrums, there is
a strong, stable and pro-EU leader east of Paris and Berlin – Poland’s prime
minister, Donald Tusk.
For European
officials, it’s a helpful gift of the calendar that Poland takes charge of the
EU Council rotating presidency from 1 January.
Tusk, a
former European Council president, returned as Poland’s prime minister in 2023,
leading a broad coalition that defeated the rightwing populist party Law and
Justice (PiS). One of his first acts was to end a long-festering dispute with
Brussels with a pledge to restore constitutional norms, which unlocked billions
of frozen EU funds. Tusk later showed his influence inside the European Council
of EU leaders, helping to orchestrate the return of his centre-right ally
Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission president.
An EU
presidency is a technical business: chairing hundreds of meetings, setting
agendas. Tusk has no formal role. But symbolism matters. The presidency logo, a
Polish flag entwined with the letters “E” and “U”, is intended to project
Poland’s return to the European mainstream. Tusk’s government, which has
pledged to prioritise security during its six-month stint, is an especially
welcome contrast after the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s rogue
diplomacy during his country’s presidency.
Michał
Wawrykiewicz, a centre-right MEP, affiliated to the governing Civic Coalition,
said: “We are just after the presidency of Hungary, which is the biggest
violator of all of the fundamentals of the European Union. So it is a good time
slot for my country to prove that we are one of the leaders of the European
Union.”
But the
image of harmony regained is not quite what it seems. First, Poland’s
democratic restoration is incomplete. As many as a third of Poland’s 10,000
judges are so-called “neo judges”, according to the Council of Europe – ie
politicised appointees who took office through processes introduced by PiS that
were widely deemed to violate the rule of law. Tusk’s government faces a legal
minefield in restoring independent judges, while the PiS-aligned President
Andrzej Duda is blocking many reforms. “It shows how difficult it is to reverse
the country on the democratic path after such a huge devastation,” said
Wawrykiewicz, a lawyer who campaigned to restore the rule of law before he was
elected as an MEP in 2024.
Duda is
nearing the end of his term limit, so presidential elections likely in May will
be critical in determining whether Tusk’s government can fulfil its promise to
restore the rule of law in Poland. That could affect how Poland runs its
presidency. Some EU insiders contend that Poland’s government is playing it
safe by avoiding putting controversial topics on the EU agenda, such as 2040
carbon reduction targets.
Before Duda
stands down, he could be a helpful bridge to Donald Trump’s White House. Anna
Wójcik, of Kozminski University in Warsaw, said Tusk’s government could use the
“surprising card of President Duda, who has good relations with the
president-elect of the United States”.
More
broadly, Warsaw has a good story to tell Trump, who has fiercely criticised
Nato allies for “not paying their bills”. Poland, already the biggest defence
spender in GDP terms in Nato, is expected to spend 4.7% of its economic output
on defence in 2025. This will be an advantage in Washington and “a way of
proving that Europe can well commit and even over-commit” to Nato goals, Wójcik
said.
During its
EU presidency, Poland is expected to make the case for more European defence
spending, including via EU financing, which could entail joint borrowing. The
European Commission has put the cost of boosting EU defences at a minimum of
€500bn and has promised an options paper on how to raise these funds early in
2025.
Any
agreement on European defence spending will have to go through Europe’s largest
contributor to the EU budget, Germany, where political opposition and legal
constraints make common borrowing deeply problematic. More broadly, despite the
return of a pro-EU government in Warsaw and the epoch-making “turning point”,
the Zeitenwende, in Germany, German-Polish relations are weighed down by
mistrust and recrimination.
Under the
previous PiS government, Poland waged a long-running campaign for reparations
for damage caused by the Nazi invasion and occupation. Germany, meanwhile, was
one of Warsaw’s toughest critics on the politicisation of its courts, helping
to broker an agreement in 2020 that meant EU funds could be frozen over
rule-of-law violations.
In theory,
Tusk’s election should have improved relations, but the mood remains sour.
Berlin was exasperated when in May Tusk joined forces with the Greek prime
minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, to call for a European air defence shield to
protect EU airspace against all incoming threats, described as “a bold
initiative that will send a clear and strong message to our friends and foes”.
Germany dismissed the plan as a nonstarter, objecting to its vast cost and
apparent emphasis on it being made in Europe.
For Tusk,
facing smears from his PiS rivals of being pro-German, that refusal closed down
a positive, future-looking project that could have put relations on a better
path. “There is no agreement on how to solve this conundrum in the
Polish-German relations,” said Piotr Buras, the head of the European Council on
Foreign Relations’ office in Warsaw. “This is a major problem for Tusk because
he is the one who faces accusations that he is too pro-German, so he needs to
make himself more credible to the Polish public opinion by being tough on
Germany.”
Buras thinks
the rest of the EU underestimates how far PiS “redefined the parameters of the
Polish European debate”. Polish support for the EU remains high but has fallen
back from the stratospheric enthusiasm of the recent past: a survey for the
Warsaw-based pollster CBOS showed 77% of respondents in favour of the EU in
April 2024, down from 92% less than two years earlier. Opposition to Ukrainian
refugees in Poland is growing.
“Tusk is
very much under pressure from the opposition, from the PiS, and he needs to be
very, very cautious and he is very cautious,” Buras said. “That sets limits for
some major pro-European, courageous initiatives.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário