1h ago
06.15 BST
What does
a Nawrocki victory mean for Poland's foreign policy?
Jon Henley
Ahead of the
election, our Europe correspondent Jon Henley spoke to experts about what a
Nawrocki win would mean for the country’s foreign policy. Here’s a snippet of
what he wrote:
While in
theory Polish presidents have limited influence over foreign policy, a win for
Nawrocki, backed by PiS, would inevitably – and, eventually, significantly –
constrain Poland’s European ambitions, analysts say.
“We’re
not so much talking direct policy consequences,” said Piotr Buras of the
European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank. “But if Trzaskowski, Tusk’s
candidate, loses, the message is that Poles reject him and his government.”
Deprived
of that legitimacy, Tusk “will struggle to play the big role in the EU he has
started to play”, Buras said. “His government will be weaker, its room for
manoeuvre will shrink. It’s about Poland’s capacity to play a strong role on
the EU stage.”
Tusk’s
electoral victory two years ago marked the beginning of Poland’s return to the
European fold after two fractious terms of populist national-conservative rule
during which Warsaw clashed repeatedly with Brussels over rule of law concerns.
PiS also
regularly picked unnecessary fights with Germany, and in many EU debates sided
with the illiberal Hungarian government of the prime minister, Viktor Orbán,
the bloc’s disrupter-in-chief, further alienating Poland from the European
mainstream.
The
return of Tusk, elected on a promise to undo most of the PiS-era reforms, led
to a sea change in relations, with the EU rapidly unblocking more than €100bn
of funds it had frozen in retaliation for Poland’s backsliding on democratic
norms.
Bolstered
by a thriving economy, rising prosperity and its strategic importance in the
resistance to Russia’s war on Ukraine, Warsaw has transformed itself in two
short years into one of the EU’s most influential capitals, best buddies with
Berlin and Paris.
But its
full return to the EU fold can be complete only if Tusk can deliver on those
key reforms – in particular, rolling back PiS’s politicisation of the court
system – that have so far been blocked by the outgoing PiS-aligned president,
Andrzej Duda.
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