Poland takes EU baton as Tusk braces for pivotal presidential election

May’s vote on Poland’s next head of state looms large over the country’s six-month EU presidency, which starts Jan. 1.

By Barbara Moens and Wojciech Kość

^{Ilustration by Beatrice Caciotti for POLITICO}

This article is part of the Polish Presidency of the EU special report.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk will be laser-focused on one presidency in the first half of next year — but it’s not the one where Poland takes its turn to shepherd legislation through the Council of the European Union.

Instead, his attention will be commandeered by the Polish presidential election in May and the critical task of making sure a friendly president takes over after incumbent Andrzej Duda leaves office.

Duda, an ally of the former government party Law and Justice (PiS), has hardly missed an opportunity to undermine Tusk’s credibility and popular support by preventing the year-old government from carrying out much of its electoral program. He has even refused to sign off on government candidates for ambassadors.

Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition still leads the nationalist PiS in the polls, but there’s no guarantee that this advantage will last if the country elects another PiS-backed president who kneecaps the Tusk government until the end of its term in 2027.

The election is happening as Tusk attempts to deliver on promises made during last year’s campaign — like easing access to abortion or establishing civil partnerships regardless of gender — while keeping his rainbow coalition with the Polish People’s Party, Poland 2050 and The Left in line.

And these domestic pressures will be a constraining factor for Poland’s six-month EU presidency, which starts Jan. 1, said Piotr Buras, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ office in Warsaw. “The Polish government perceives this election as absolutely fundamental for the country’s future. This is basically what matters most for Tusk.”

But Warsaw downplayed the impact of the presidential election on its turn to set the agenda in Brussels. “Poland will be the honest broker and the most efficient presidency possible,” Poland’s EU Affairs Minister Adam Szłapka told POLITICO. “Elections, including the presidential one in Poland, are a natural part of democracies and won’t affect in any way our work in Brussels.”

Donald Trump’s return as president of the United States in January — in particular, his position on Ukraine — could prove to be a counterweight to domestic political pressures and force Tusk to pay more attention to events in Brussels. 

Together with the Baltics, Poland has led the charge for the EU to provide more military and financial support for Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The country fears that Trump’s much-touted peace deal could simply force Ukraine to concede territories to Russia, effectively emboldening its geopolitical ambitions. 

This is what Tusk will be focusing on during Poland’s presidency, said Andrzej Bobinski, managing director at Polityka Insight, a Polish think tank. “Navigating in these difficult waters around Trump, Ukraine, and his leadership in Europe.”

Polish minister Szłapka said that the country’s priority for the presidency is “security in its different dimensions, including external and internal security of the EU.”

“With Putin’s war next door, among global tensions and internal challenges, it is security of the Europeans that is the foundation and the uniting factor,” he said.

The question, however, will be how much Poland will (and wants to) move the needle.

Ever since Tusk — a former president of the European Council — returned to the EU’s top table last year, Brussels hoped that the Polish prime minister would work with France and Germany to revalitize the EU. 

But the trio — known as the “Weimar Triangle” — has only had limited success since Tusk’s return to power, partly because of his national worries. While Tusk did play a key role in securing Ursula von der Leyen a second mandate as president of the European Commission, his European counterparts often feel his attention is divided. Meanwhile, Paris and Berlin have seen their own domestic chaos, with Germany now heading to the polls early next year.

“Will Tusk now finally take up the gauntlet?” asked one EU official, who was granted anonimity to discuss sensitive talks.

Most likely it will be the Polish representation to Brussels, not Warsaw, that will be driving the action at EU level over the next six months, diplomats said. 

“Tusk paints politics in very broad strokes,” said Bobinski of Polityka Insight, adding that he doesn’t think the Polish prime minister “will have the attention span and the will to really go deep into Brussels politics.”

There are also some policy elephants in the room. 

Tusk’s return toppled the nationalist, conservative PiS administration, which sided with Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán to throw spanners into the EU’s works. Tusk’s return has put Warsaw back into the broadly centrist, pro-European camp, but there are still some more delicate files — such as the EU’s climate policy — where Poland finds itself outside the general European consensus.

Overall, though, the bar for Poland’s presidency is relatively low, following on, as it does, from Hungary’s inflammatory turn in the chair. The new European Commission will also still be gearing up, with legislative proposals not expected to land until the middle-to-end of the Polish presidency, or even later in the year.

“They won’t do much, but they also won’t disappoint much,” the EU official said.

Barbara Moens reported from Brussels. Wojciech Kość reported from Warsaw. Dionisios Sturis contributed reporting from Brussels.