Las polish presidential elections next May will condition the management of the rotating presidency of the European Union (EU) that falls to Poland in the first half of 2025. The Polish prime minister, the conservative Donald Tuskcannot afford to lose a single vote in those elections, since he needs to snatch the presidency of the country from the far-right Law and Justice (PiS), because with his veto power the current president, Andrzej Duda, It obstructs the process of democratic regeneration undertaken by its popular-social-democratic-liberal coalition government after eight years of ultra-state control.
The presidential candidate of Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO) party, Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, is the favorite, ahead of PiS candidate Karol Nawrocki, according to polls, but that advantage could be reduced if voters estimate that Tusk has accepted or promoted at European level measures harmful to Poland during his EU presidency. The PiS’s disqualification of Tusk as “pro-German” and Tusk’s willingness to prove otherwise makes relations with Germany, an unavoidable European partner, difficult.
In diplomatic circles it is estimated that the Polish presidency of the EU will put its national interests before European ones and will avoid or postpone sensitive measures that may have a negative political reading on Polish interests, such as the development of the EU’s climate policy, restrictions environmental issues in the agricultural sector, the demands on biodiversity and restoration of degraded soils and the reduction of CO2 emissions and the use of coal.
Poland opposes the agreement with Mercosur
Poland, like France, is against ratifying the EU Trade Agreement with Mercosur in its current form, because it believes it harms the Polish agricultural sector. The start of planning for the EU multiannual budgetary framework 2028-2034 is another sensitive issue for Poland. Tusk has appointed a close collaborator, Piotr Serafin, as European Commissioner for Budgets to try to stop European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s harmful plans for Poland to limit funds for agriculture and cohesion in the future framework budgetary.
Poland has chosen to prioritize defense, security and control of immigration and external borders during its European presidency, issues with broad national consensus. Tusk prefers not to prioritize the European military industry to please the United States and clashes with Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Finland by asking for more EU funding for defense.
Poland is one of Ukraine’s main supporters in the EU, but that support breaks down when it comes to kyiv’s agricultural exports, restricted by Warsaw. During this semester, the EU’s trade preferences for Ukraine, which expire on June 5, must be renegotiated and the Polish rural electorate is very important for Tusk. The border blockades by Polish farmers had broad social support and polls indicate that the majority of Poles believe that national interests and the protection of the agricultural sector should be prioritized over support for Ukraine. Tusk has stated that Ukrainian agricultural exports to the EU basically serve to enrich oligarchs and multinationals. Under agrarian pressure, Poland and other countries want to cut those preferences that kyiv considers essential to avoid aggravating its economic situation after three years of war with Russia.
ethnic cleansing
Relations between Poland and Ukraine are also strained by kyiv’s resistance to exhume and honor with a proper burial the tens of thousands of Poles murdered in the ethnic cleansing operations carried out in 1943 by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). in Volhynia and Galicia. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance estimates the number of Poles murdered by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the UPA at 100,000. The Polish Parliament approved in 2016 to establish July 11 as “National Day of Remembrance of the Genocide” of Poles committed by Ukrainian nationalists in 1943-1945. The Tusk government has indicated that Ukraine will not enter the EU until the exhumations have been completed and kyiv has acknowledged Ukrainian responsibility for the massacres, while Ukraine considers members of those organizations national heroes.
