Eurocrats Watch Poland With Bated Breath

The message to Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk is clear: America is watching.

As Poland’s presidential election approaches—the first round will occur Sunday, the same day as nearby Romania’s second round—the significance is not lost on American public figures, including President Donald Trump.

Barring a shock result, the candidates emerging to the second round will be Warsaw’s Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who is aligned with the liberal, EU-backed government of Tusk; and Karol Nawrocki, a prominent historian aligned with the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, which led conservative governments from 2015 to 2023. 

For conservatives, the short-term prize is the status quo: outgoing term-limited President Andrzej Duda is informally allied with PiS. His presidential veto has been a critical, albeit imperfect, check on a government that has arrested political opponents, disregarded judicial rulings, scrubbed the media ecosystem, and handicapped its opponents’ participation in elections. This is the “Smiling Poland” promoted by the EU bureaucracy, regional talking heads like Anne Applebaum and Timothy Snyder, and the partially departed Biden foreign-policy apparatus. 

To their chagrin, the Nawrocki campaign is ascendant. Polls suggested a comfortable Trzaskowski advantage for months, but Nawrocki has surged and enters the final weeks as the arguable favorite.

“Tusk’s candidate [Trzaskowski] is far from the image of a nice, calm, confidence-inspiring guy,” journalist Marek Pyza wrote recently in the conservative weekly Sieci. “In recent weeks, he gives the impression of an exhausted, offended narcissist, frustrated that he has any opponents in this race, that anyone dares to ask him any uncomfortable questions.”

Nawrocki’s momentum coincides with a string of visible endorsements. In late April, President Duda backed Nawrocki as his successor. Earlier this month, Nawrocki unexpectedly visited the White House for the National Day of Prayer. He posed for photos with President Trump and met with several key administration officials.

The transatlantic visit “can be viewed as a kind of endorsement,” explained Jarosław Szczepański, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw. “This can be interpreted as support because the U.S. administration, seeing that Nawrocki could be a continuation of Andrzej Duda’s presidency, is supporting him as much as diplomatic protocol allows.”

Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee followed up the visit with a letter to Michael McGrath, EU Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, and Rule of Law, in which they requested “a briefing about how the actions of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government might infringe upon Americans’ right to free speech online and what the EU is doing to respond to the Tusk government’s anti-democratic actions.” 

Neither an unofficial Trump endorsement nor a statement from House Republicans is likely to move the needle with Polish swing voters. These moves are about putting Polish and European officials on notice that the United States will not tolerate anti-democratic liberal overreach in a country as strategically important as Poland.

The coincidence with Romania’s presidential election is symbolic. (In a TAC interview this week, Romanian candidate George Simion asserted, “I’m proud to call Karol Nawrocki—a close ally and the likely successor to President Andrzej Duda—a friend.”)  Since Vice President J.D. Vance’s February speech at the Munich Security Conference, the world has witnessed France ban Marine Le Pen and Germany classify Alternative for Germany as an extremist group, both acts reminiscent of the banana-republic justice served in Romania last year. 

The election outcome is not assured, even in the absence of liberal machinations. Even polls favorable to Nawrocki suggest a close race. Trzaskowski has the full backing of Polish and European institutions and next-door neighbors in Germany, not to mention the Polish urban managerial class, for whom the opposition conservatives are anathema. Then, irrespective of polling, there are simply too many variables of voter behavior in the second round.

In a rapidly gentrifying Poland, the margins are getting tighter for conservative electoral coalitions. As usual, supporters of the agrarian Polish People’s Party (PSL) are enjoying considerable attention. Due to animosity toward PiS, it is part of the ruling government, but its socially conservative views often cause it to bicker with coalition partners. Nawrocki cannot afford to shed voters in the agrarian strongholds where PSL is influential. 

Supporters of the centrist Szymon Hołownia, an influential figure in the current government who has run a disappointing presidential race, might decide in sufficient numbers that they are exhausted of the Tusk-Trzaskowski camp. Some supporters of the smattering of left-wing candidates could decide Trzaskowski is a bigger threat than the conservative; likewise, voters of two right-populist candidates might elect not to side with their more mainstream conservative rival. Of course, a critical mass of voters might simply stay home.

Perhaps analysis of these traditional electoral factors is quaint in this European political environment. Arguably the most important question is whether Prime Minister Tusk and his allies in Brussels would allow Nawrocki to win—and then take office.

“You will win,” President Trump reportedly told Nawrocki during their DC meeting. More revealing was Tusk’s alleged response to the question of what he’ll do if Trzaskowski loses: “I’ll manage.”

Maybe these are the musings of experienced politicians with access to high-quality information. Nonetheless, predictable wheels are turning. On Wednesday, Polish data-network operator NASK announced suspicious Facebook ads potentially funded from abroad. Warsaw and Brussels must soon determine how many more lines they are willing to cross.