© Agencja Gazeta/Adam Stepien via REUTERS

The outcome of Poland’s presidential election on July 12 will cause ripples not only in the country itself, but also in Europe. Formally, the Polish presidency is a mostly ceremonial post, though with the power to veto laws. Yet symbolically, the result of the election will shape whether Poland becomes more open or closed—and its role within the post-Brexit, coronavirus-era EU.

Since 2015, Poland has been governed by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which combines social conservatism with a statist approach to the economy. While not opposed to Poland’s EU membership, it has adopted a more defiant attitude to the EU, similar to that of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Its overhaul of the country’s judiciary, including the Supreme Court, has led to a drawn-out conflict with the European Commission, which has accused the PiS government of undermining the rule of law.

In this election, Poles will choose between Andrzej Duda, the PiS-backed president (he left the party after he was elected in 2015), and Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, who hails from the centrist Civic Platform (PO), the old party of Donald Tusk, who served as Polish prime minister before taking on the presidency of the European Council. Both of the candidates were born in 1972, have a background in academia, and served as members of the European Parliament. Politically, though, they are on opposite sides of the PO-PiS conflict that has dominated Polish politics for more than a decade.

PiS vs. PO, Reloaded

In the first round of the election on June 28, Duda came first with 43.5 percent of the vote, followed by Trzaskowski with 30.5 percent. The rest of the vote was split between several candidates: Szymon Hołownia, a liberal Catholic who ran as an independent, with 13.9 percent, far-right national Krzysztof Bosak, with 6.8 percent, agrarian candidate Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz with 2.4 percent, and center-left candidate Robert Biedroń. The other candidates got less than 0.3 percent. As no one candidate attracted over 50 percent of the votes, there will be a Duda-Trzaskowski runoff on July 12.

Despite the coronavirus epidemic, the health and economic situation has not figured prominently in the election campaign. Instead, Duda tried to mobilize socially conservative voters with homophobic rhetoric, calling LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights an “ideology” more destructive than communism. This was a direct attack on Trzaskowski, who signed an LGBT Declaration for Warsaw last year, after he was elected mayor.

Foreign policy hasn’t been much of a campaign issue, either, even though Poland’s president is the state representative in international affairs and commander-in-chief of the armed forced. At a basic level, this reflects the longstanding consensus in Polish politics, whereby Poland is firmly rooted in the EU and NATO. However, there are significant differences in emphasis between the two candidates.

A Visit to the White House

Duda has banked on relations with the United States. On June 24, four days before the first round, he made a last-minute visit to the White House to meet with President Donald Trump. Although no concrete decisions were made, the meeting was meant to show Poland’s close relationship with the US. The visit came with an apparent endorsement from Trump: “And I do believe he has an election coming up, and I do believe he’ll be very successful,” he said at the joint press conference with Duda in the Rose Garden. This raised eyebrows in Poland and beyond, with one European diplomat warning that Poland is taking a risk by being so close to such a controversial politician, who might not be re-elected later this year. Trzaskowski responded to Duda’s meeting Trump with a telephone conversation with former President Barack Obama the following week, during which they spoke about “the importance of Polish democracy within the EU and the significance of the US-Polish alliance.”

As president, Duda’s main foreign policy endeavor has been the Three Seas Initiative, a Polish-Croatian venture bringing together 12 Central European countries, including Austria, that seeks to improve cross-border energy, transport, and digital infrastructure in the region (its recent summits have been attended by representatives of the US and German governments). Although he is not against Poland’s membership in the EU, this has not stopped Duda from making disparaging statements about it. In 2018, for example, he called the EU an “imaginary community from which we don’t gain much …Of course we have the right to have expectations towards Europe—especially towards the Europe that left us to be the prey of the Russians in 1945—but above all we have the right to rule ourselves here on our own and decide what form Poland should have,” he said, speaking at an event in the town of Leżajsk, in the country’s south-east, which tends to be more pro-PiS. On another occasion, also in 2018, Duda likened EU membership to the partition of Poland, when the country was divided between Prussia, Austria, and Russia from 1795 until 1918. This kind of rhetoric reflects the wider tendency in PiS to speak of the EU in terms of “us” versus “them.”

An Active Role

In contrast, Trzaskowski—who served as Poland’s Europe minister from 2014 to 2015 in the PO-led government before PiS came to power—has tended to emphasize the active role Poland has to play in Europe, not least after Brexit. “We will not substitute Britain, but we can offer this young spirit, this dynamism, this openness and perspective,” he told me in an interview in Warsaw last year, in English (one of the several languages he speaks). “The partitions, the Second World War, then communism stifled the dynamism and now it’s out in the open, and that is why we crave those possibilities,” he added, explaining that Poland could channel this energy into Europe.

Asked about his first visit abroad if he is elected president during a televised Q&A with journalists on July 6, Trzaskowski said that he would first invite the French and German presidents to Warsaw, to “renew the Weimar Triangle” which consists of France, Germany and Poland.  His first visit abroad will be to Brussels, to “fight for as large a budget as possible for Poland.” The country “is truly strong when it is strong and influential in the EU,” he said, adding that he will seek to rebuild its position, after its marginalization by PiS.

With strengthening fundamental values, notably the rule of law, among the priorities of the six-month German presidency of the Council of the European Union, which began on July 1, 2020, a change in president in Warsaw would also affect the dynamics of the Polish government’s conflict with the European Commission over the courts. Trzaskowski announced this week that, as president, he would use his power of veto to block any decision by the PiS government that does further damage to Poland’s courts.

With the two candidates neck and neck in the opinion polls, Berlin, Paris, and other capitals are preparing for both scenarios. In broad terms, Duda’s re-election would mean a continuation of the status quo. Meanwhile, a Trzaskowski victory could offer new opportunities in bilateral relations and within the EU (such as strengthening the Weimar Triangle at the presidential level, as mentioned above). In the election on July 12, Poles will not only be casting a vote for the type of country they want to live in, but also its role in Europe.

The post The Fight for Poland’s Place in Europe appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© Slawomir Kamisnki/Agencja Gazeta via REUTERS

Poland’s de facto leader Jarosław Kaczyński and Viktor Orbán share the same goal. They both aim to use the coronavirus crisis to strengthen their power. But in Poland, unlike in Hungary, the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government is doing everything it can to prevent the declaration of a state of emergency.

According to the Polish constitution, declaring a state of emergency would require the postponement of the presidential elections scheduled for May 10. This delay would be a political setback for the sitting PiS government, which believes that incumbent President Andrzej Duda is the clear favorite, especially now that campaigning has been suspended due to the coronavirus crisis. The government thus has an incentive to hold the election amid a pandemic and a lockdown.

As a result, Poland is slipping more and more into a state of a blunt power struggle. On the one hand, the government is introducing more and more stringent restrictions to fight the pandemic, including a ban on entering forests, beaches, and parks. The fact that soldiers, in addition to the regular domestic security forces, are monitoring compliance with these regulations adds to the sense of seriousness.

At the same time, PiS representatives have long argued that nothing stands in the way of holding elections in early May—with over 30 million registered voters—in the usual way. They even threatened that local authorities who refuse to organize the elections due to health risks will be removed from office and replaced by commissioners.

After the government’s own health minister raised questions about the public health consequences of holding the election as planned, the government came up with the idea of bypassing current laws, by changing the Electoral Code and allowing postal voting only for all citizens, without even opening any ballot stations. Although the Constitutional Court has ruled that it is forbidden to amend the electoral law less than six months before the election, the government appears determined to go ahead. To make sure, the head of the post office has been replaced by a trusted deputy defense minister.

Political Turmoil

Forcing a shift to a postal vote would not only deepen the permanent political turmoil in which Poland has found itself since PiS returned to power in 2015, but there is also the sense of an acute crisis of legitimacy. Surveys indicate that almost 80 percent of Poles support postponing the elections, and only about a quarter of them believe that postal voting is a good idea. While this reluctance does not seem to worry Poland’s government, who typically seem to follow Kaczyński’s orders, it would certainly make it harder to build national solidarity in the face of a crisis.

Meanwhile, Kaczyński and his acolytes have been trying to remove further obstacles to the postal elections. A war raging within the governing coalition, between Kaczynski and the leader of one of two PiS’s small coalition partners Porozumienie (“Agreement”), Jarosław Gowin, who didn’t want to bow to Kaczynski’s will, ended up humiliated.

Gowin proposed a compromise solution, an amendment to the constitution that would extend Duda’s term by two years, with no possibility of re-election. But Gowin did not find support for his proposal in the ranks of the opposition, whose votes are necessary for constitutional changes. Failing then to convince Kaczyński to postpone the election, he resigned as deputy prime minister, but announced that his party will not leave the government replacing him with his party colleague, Development Minister Jadwiga Emilewicz.

When it seemed that sidelining Gowin brought the ruling camp closer to its desired goal, a notion to bring the bill to the parliament’s floor was surprisingly rejected at first by the Sejm on Monday; by the evening, however, there was a majority for switching to a postal vote. It’s not plain sailing, though. The Senate, where the opposition holds a marginal majority, also needs to approve the measure. Although the Sejm can reject its veto, the Senate has now 30 days to discuss with the bill. This means that after the final adoption of the law there would only be a few days left to organize the elections. They may then be moved, possibly to May 17, as the new law grants the Speaker of the Sejm, who takes her orders directly from Kaczyński, the right to change the election day.

Time to React

Should the presidential elections go ahead in May, there are serious doubts they would be considered fair and fully free. But for the time being, the EU, which has reacted to various breaches of the rule of law in Poland in the past, has taken a backseat, as it has in Hungary. Last week, a European Commission spokesman noted that “it is for member states to decide whether to postpone planned elections in the current context,” as long as such decision is consistent with the member states’ constitutional obligations.

However, steps taken so far by the EU to halt the Polish government’s anti-democratic tendencies, including triggering the Article 7 procedure, have had little impact on Poland. And anti-EU sentiments continue to be strongly expressed by the government and its acolytes. Public television—which serves the government as a propaganda mouthpiece—, journalists with links to the ruling party, and PiS MPs have all accused the European Union of showing a lack of solidarity and of interfering in Poland’s domestic affairs. This time, this anti-European choir was also joined by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, considered a moderate and relatively pro-European, who claimed that “the European Union did not give a single cent for the fight against the coronavirus.”

Can the Law and Justice party make its tactic work? And if yes, will it drag Poland further away from the European Union? It may soon turn out that the anti-European rhetoric and putting politics ahead of the fight against the epidemic and its economic consequences backfires. All the more so, because the government’s economic “’anti-crisis shield’ is quite modest when compared with other European countries. It accounts for about 10 percent of Poland’s GDP, while other leaders have put packages of up to 20 percent of their respective countries’ GDP on the table.

What is more important, however, is the fact that as many as three quarters of Poles expect that the experience of the pandemic will result in closer cooperation between EU member states. If the EU succeeds in rebuilding trust by preparing ambitious and effective aid programs, this feeling could be further reinforced. And Poles, whose euro-enthusiasm is widespread, although often superficial, might quickly come to the conclusion that isolation the PiS way is not splendid, but miserable.

NB. This article was updated on April 7 to include the vote taken by the Sejm.

The post Poland’s Troubled Presidential Elections appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

As expected, PiS won the Polish parliamentary elections on October 13, but not as well as it hoped to. “We received a lot, but we deserve more,” said party leader Jarosław Kaczyński after the exit poll was announced that evening. The party won 43.6 percent of the vote, which will give it 235 out of 460 seats in the Sejm, the lower chamber of parliament. This is enough for it to maintain its absolute majority and continue governing alone, but not by much.

After a disappointing result in the elections to the European Parliament in May, the opposition parties decided to run for the Sejm separately, as three blocs. The centrist Civic Coalition led by the Civic Platform (PO)—formerly headed by Donald Tusk until he left to become president of the European Council in 2014—won 27.4 percent of the vote, or 134 seats. The agrarians led by the Polish People’s Party (PSL) received 8.6 percent (30 seats), and the left 12.6 percent (49 seats). The fifth party to cross the electoral threshold of 5 percent was the far-right Konfederacja (“Confederation”), with 6.8 percent. It will have 11 seats.

These results will change the political landscape in the Sejm, adding new voices from the social-democratic left and the far-right. The left, which failed to cross the electoral threshold in 2015 (as a coalition, it needed 8 percent), is back—rejuvenated. The old Democratic Left Alliance ran together with two newer parties, Razem (“Together”) and Wiosna (“Spring”), the party founded earlier this year by gay-rights activist and former mayor of Słupsk Robert Biedroń. Contrasting with PiS’s social conservatism, the left supports gay marriage and the right to abortion.

The other newcomer to the Sejm is Konfederacja, an alliance of nationalist parties formed ahead of the European Parliament elections, in which it finished slightly below the threshold. Openly euroskeptic, the party is even further to the right than PiS. This is bad news for the ruling party: it will face pressure from the right in the Sejm and stronger competition for nationalist voters, especially young people. According to the exit poll, Konfederacja got almost 20 percent of the vote in the 18-29 age group. It was also more popular among men than women.

The opposition’s main victory—practical and symbolic—is the Senate. Unlike in the vote for the Sejm, the three opposition blocs made a pact for the upper chamber of parliament, agreeing not to run candidates against each other. Together, they will have a slight majority of 51 out of 100 senators. In practical terms, this will allow it to slow down (but not completely stop) the legislative process by amending or rejecting bills proposed by PiS in the Sejm. The symbolic dimension is perhaps even more important: it shows what the opposition parties can achieve by working together.

Dominated by Domestic Issues

Since PiS came to power in 2015, politics has been dominated by the split between the party’s supporters and its opponents. Similarly, the election campaign was all about domestic issues. PiS successfully kept the focus on two main topics: its new welfare policies and so-called “LGBT ideology”, which it presented as a threat. Kaczynski positioned his party as the “protector of the Polish family” by creating what he calls the “Polish version of the welfare state” and shielding it against an “attack” by gay people.

European issues and the Polish government’s protracted dispute with the European Commission over the rule of law hardly featured in the campaign. The PiS leadership’s main reference to the EU, in the context of its economic policies, was to bringing “European standards of living” to Poland. In the run-up to the European elections earlier in May, the party had soften its rhetoric in response to the opposition’s accusations that it wants to lead Poland out of the EU. Its slogan in that election was “Poland heart of Europe.”

While its relations with Brussels and Berlin remained strained, the PiS leadership were keen to highlight Poland’s good relations with United States and, specifically, the Trump administration. On October 5, just before the elections, the US President Donald Trump announced that Poland had been formally nominated for the visa-waiver program that allows visa-free travel to US for up to 90 days, which Warsaw had wanted for a long time.

When the new government is appointed next month, this approach to foreign policy is likely to continue, while domestic politics will again dominate the agenda, as PiS focuses on implementing its welfare promises and fighting off the opposition. Politicians are already thinking about the next standoff between PiS and its opponents: the presidential election in 2020.

Despite the inward-looking tendencies in PiS, domestic and European politics will remain intertwined. Relations with Brussels will not improve overnight: the PiS government’s dispute with the European institutions over the rule of law remains unresolved. Moreover, with Brexit on the horizon, Poland will have to think once more about its place in Europe.

The post No Earthquake in Poland, But Some Shifts appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.