Source: Ember/Agora Energiewende

The public discourse about the energy transition tends to focus on the additive side: can we add enough wind turbines so that they produce a quarter of our electricity? From a climate protection point of view, however, it is the subtractive side of the transition that is relevant. The objective is to avoid burning fossil fuels, and it doesn’t matter to the atmosphere whether we do so by running the dryer on renewable power, making it more efficient, or not turning it on at all.

It’s a bit like tobacco, another product we burned for a long time before we were aware of the health effects. You might have no hope of giving up cigarettes unless you exercise, meditate, or vape. But doing all of those things, as nice as they might be, will do little to reduce your risk of lung cancer if you still smoke a pack a day.

This irksome fact—that we need to stop consuming still-valuable resources—is what makes the low-carbon energy transition different from previous transitions and coal exits such an important part of EU climate policy.

Coal’s Dying Embers

The good news is coal is on the way out in Europe. In 2019, wind and solar generated more electricity than fossil fuels for the first time ever, as EU-27 power plants burned 339 million tons of coal, down from 586 million tons in 2012. The pandemic-blighted year of 2020 has seen a further drop, with EU coal power generation down nearly a third thanks to a mild winter, low demand during lockdown, and the falling cost of renewables.

Though the trend line is clear, the Europe-wide statistics mask major differences between countries. Sweden, Austria, and Belgium have already closed down their last coal power plants. Coal is increasingly irrelevant for power production in the United Kingdom, Italy, and France, which all plan to quit coal completely over the next few years. Lagging behind are Slovenia, Bulgaria, Greece, and the Czech Republic, which all generate a sizable share of their electricity from coal but do limited damage to the climate because of their relatively small economies.

Then there’s Germany and Poland. Each generated about as much electricity from coal as the rest of the EU combined in the first half of 2020, and each plans to burn coal for many years to come.

The Kohleausstieg

In July, Germany adopted a law to ensure the end of coal power by 2038 at the latest. Unfortunately, the Kohleausstieg will happen so slowly that it is incompatible with the Paris Agreement goals—to reach those targets, the German Institute for Economic Research found, Germany would have to quit coal by 2030. Critics also argue that the law will give power companies too much compensation for running coal-fired plants that won’t be profitable anyway.

On the other hand, the process has been a shining example of how to steer and manage the decline of an important industry, with power companies, coal miners and coal regions, and a majority of the Bundestag able to reach a compromise. The €40 billion set aside for coal-dependent regions is a sign that the government realizes the scale of the job. And the coal exit could go faster in the end: the German Federal Network Agency, for one, expects it to be wrapped up by 2035. An expensive date that arrives too late is better than none at all.

Light at the End of the Mine

Poland has set no date for its coal exit. Deputy Prime Minister Jacek Sasin recently said, “We believe that Poland’s dependence on coal energy will come to an end in 2050 or even 2060,” a timeline that makes Germany’s plodding exit look like a hundred-yard dash.

While the nationalist-conservative PiS government is especially close with the coal industry, politics is not the only obstacle to rapid change. Poland is wary of replacing some coal with Russian gas (as Germany has done) and also has no nuclear power plants (a soon-to-be-realized German objective). Ahead of the 2019 parliamentary elections the biggest opposition group, the European Coalition, proposed 2040 as an end date for coal. It appears Poland’s coal replacement will be a slow one, whoever is in charge.

It’s not as if Polish decision-makers are unaware that the future for coal is not bright. The CEO of state-owned coal giant PGG, Tomasz Rogala, admits that “the situation is critical.” The Ministry of State Assets, which Sasin leads, reportedly planned to introduce a restructuring plan for PGG in late July. The plan would have closed several loss-making mines this year, temporarily cut miners’ salaries, created a fund for miners who quit to receive retraining, and perhaps even set a coal exit date of 2036.

In the face of pressure from powerful trade unions, however, the government had to walk back its restructuring plans. (Poland is going ahead with a plan to combine its three utilities in two groups, one for coal and one for non-coal energy, which could pave the way for more changes to come.) It now wants to set up a commission, including union representatives, to find a solution acceptable to all.

Coal miners will benefit from the government’s recent creation of a strategic reserve of hard coal worth €30 million, the latest installment of state support for an industry that has come to rely on it. Polish miners are having to dig deeper and deeper to access coal, which makes it more expensive. In fact, Polish firms have been importing huge quantities of Russian coal because it is cheaper and higher quality, quite a contradiction for a country with such concerns about becoming dependent on energy from the east.

Angry Neighbors

Higher costs for mining, pressure from citizens upset about foul air—in 2016 Poland had 33 of the 50 most polluted cities in Europe—these are the internal forces working against the Polish coal industry. But there is external pressure too, mostly from Brussels. The rising cost of EU emissions permits over the last three years has only added to coal-fired plants’ expenses. And one reason that Polish utilities have risked miners’ fury to import Russian coal is because its sulfur content is low enough to comply with EU regulations, unlike the Polish stuff.

As European climate regulations get stricter and the EU budget gets larger, these external pressures will grow. For instance, according to the EU budget and recovery package agreed last month under Germany’s EU Council presidency, Poland will receive only 50 percent of the funds it is eligible for under the EU’s €17.5 billion Just Transition Fund because it has declined to sign up to the EU goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

Missing out on a small share of that money, meant for the EU’s most vulnerable fossil fuel-dependent regions, won’t fundamentally change the coal equation for Polish leaders. Yet the fact that the EU is making some funds conditional on climate action (if not adherence to the rule of law) sets a precedent that could be costly for Warsaw. If the EU approves the European Commission’s proposal to increase the 2030 emissions reduction target from 40-55 percent, Poland would have real difficulties meeting its obligations.

Unsatisfying Council Conclusions

By the time of the next EU budget negotiations in 2027, coal will face an even more unfavorable environment. EU politics will be even more Europeanized, perhaps even with transnational lists for European Parliament candidates. The next budget will likely represent a bigger share of member-share revenue and be more conditional on climate action—and pressure from international bodies and trading partners will weigh heavier too.

We could even look ahead to Germany’s next European Council presidency, sometime around 2034. Greta Thunberg will be 31, the next generation of youth climate activists will be even less compromising, and EU consumers will demand more information about the carbon footprint of their products. Poland and Germany, however, will still be burning coal for electricity. Coal may be in decline in Europe, but there is still a lot of work to do to ensure we aren’t having the same debates about coal exits in seven years, or in fourteen.

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© 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.

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© 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.

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© 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.

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© Krzysztof Miller/Agencja Gazeta/via REUTERS

In 12:08 East of Bucharest, a 2006 film directed by Corneliu Porumboiu, an alcoholic professor and a pensioner go on a local television show to debate whether or not there was a revolution in their city, Vasliu, in eastern Romania, in 1989. Over the course of the show, it turns out that history is rarely straightforward. The film’s original title in Romanian, “A fost sau n-a fost?”—roughly translated as “Was There or Wasn’t There?”—reflects a broader point about the memory of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe. Thirty years on, there are still competing narratives about the events that brought down communism in the region. Today’s political disputes have been projected onto the anniversary, making it less about the past than about competing visions of the future.

This is very much the case in Poland. These days, there is little that Poles agree on, from gay rights to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, who served as Poland’s prime minister from 2007 to 2014. 1989 is one of these things, as this year’s milestone anniversary shows. From an outside perspective, this might seem surprising, given Poland’s role in the collapse of communism and its trajectory since then. For years, the country’s peaceful transition to democracy and reintegration with the West, culminating in joining the European Union in 2004, was regarded as a success story. Poland was held up as a model for countries further east, such as Ukraine. Yet rather than unite Poles, the 30th anniversary of 1989 has been subsumed in the political conflict between the ruling, right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) and the centrist opposition led by the Civic Platform (PO), Tusk’s former party. Ahead of parliamentary elections this autumn, both sides have used the anniversary to attack their opponents and promote their vision of Poland.

This split was visible this summer on the 30th anniversary of the first partially free elections in Poland, held on June 4th 1989, which resulted in a government led by the Solidarity trade union. The opposition marked the date with celebrations in the northern city of Gdańsk, the home of Solidarity. In his speech there, Tusk, who was visiting from Brussels, drew parallels between the political struggles of the 1980s and those of today’s anti-PiS opposition. “You cannot let yourself be outplayed, even if you have lost the first match,” he said, alluding to the approaching elections in Poland. The government was not present; instead, it held its own muted ceremony in the parliament. A long-anticipated cabinet reshuffle was held that day, which some commentators interpreted as an attempt draw attention away from the opposition’s celebrations in Gdańsk.

Anti-Communist Roots

To be clear, neither side regrets the fall of communism; indeed, both PiS and PO have their roots in the anti-communist opposition of the 1980s. Rather, the dispute over 1989 has three dimensions: personalities, historical narratives, and worldviews.

First, the split is about the heroes of 1989. The central figure in this dispute is Lech Wałęsa, the legendary leader of Solidarity, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and went on to serve as president from 1990 to 1995. These days, the 75-year-old Wałęsa is a contested figure in Polish politics, amid allegations that he was a paid informant for the communist secret police in the early 1970s. For part of the population, he remains a hero; for others, he embodies what (in their view) went wrong in Poland’s transition from communism. Meanwhile, Wałęsa has positioned himself as a strong critic of the PiS government.

Second, the two camps have different narratives about Poland’s transition from communism. For years, PO has presented it as a success story: Poland went from Soviet satellite state to a democracy, a market economy and a member of NATO and the EU. However, PiS has challenged this narrative. Instead, it claims that the transition was stolen by former communists and crooks. In the past, PiS’s leader Jarosław Kaczyński has called for the Third Polish Republic established in 1989 to be replaced with a new, “fourth” one, which would represent the country’s political, moral and spiritual renewal.

The party has successfully appealed to Poles who feel excluded from the country’s spectacular growth since 1989, including the elderly and people outside the big cities—groups that felt neglected by the PO government. According to a poll after the European elections in May, almost three-quarters of voters with only a primary education voted for PiS. Among voters with a university degree, the PO-led opposition coalition was well ahead of PiS. Geographically, PiS’s support base is in the country’s more rural, traditional east, which is less connected with western Europe. “If it could, Warsaw would fill it with forest,” a trade-union activist in Lublin told me shortly before the 2015 elections, referring to the PO government’s attitude to eastern Poland. This kind of resentment among parts of the population, rooted in a sense of social injustice, propelled PiS to power that autumn.

No End to History

This also explains PiS politicians’ dismissive attitude toward 1989. On June 4 last year, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted that the 1989 elections were “boycotted by many Poles, only partly free, with rules changed during them to save the national list and Communist Party candidates.” In a second tweet that day, he added that “the road to freedom was long and winding, so let’s appreciate the fact that today we can enjoy life in a democratic and safe country.” This echoes the party’s narrative that Poland owes its position and growing prosperity to PiS rule, rather than decisions made by successive governments throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

Third, the split over 1989 reflects a deeper difference in worldview. Even though PO and PiS both have their roots in the anti-communist movements of the 1980s, today they represent different visions of Poland and Europe. Since coming to power in 2015, PiS has countered the mild, pro-European liberalism of the previous, PO-led government with a populist nativism, which echoes that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. At home, it has presented refugees from the Middle East and gay people as a “threat.” Internationally, it has emphasized “sovereignty,” which has been visible in its more confrontational attitude to Brussels and Berlin. Speaking on stage together in 2016, PiS chairman Kaczyński and Orbán pledged to wage a “cultural counter-revolution” to reform the EU after Brexit.

More fundamentally, PiS has challenged the idea of 1989 as “the end of history.” In his famous article published that year, Francis Fukuyama suggested that the end of the Cold War means “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” In Poland, PiS has rejected this vision of Western liberal democracy as the end-point. Instead, it has been rebuilding the political system on its own terms, which includes a tighter grip on the public media and judges. Economically, PiS has sought to counter the more market-led policies of previous governments with a more statist approach, including an emphasis on social justice. This includes new welfare policies; its flagship program offers families 500 złoty (€120) per child per month. Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister (and a former bank CEO), has described his government’s vision as “a social capitalism, pro-social but also creating good living conditions for entrepreneurs and companies.” According to PiS’s supporters, “liberal-leftists” are to blame for Poland’s and Europe’s problems. Shortly after PiS won the elections in 2015, a government minister told me: “I grew up in a socialist democracy, then we had liberal democracy. Now I just want democracy without adjectives.”

As the trajectories of Poland, Hungary and Russia show, 30 years after the end of the Cold War, liberal democracy is not the only game in town. The elections in Poland this autumn will be between its supporters and opponents.

Despite the fraught political situation, limited agreement between Poles about specific events in 1989 may be possible. Almost two-thirds of Poles consider the elections of June 4,1989 a success, according to a recent poll (one-quarter of respondents see them as a failure). Even among PiS voters, the figure is 40 percent, with 40 percent holding the opposite view. Yet as long as there are elections to win, politicians in Poland and beyond will continue to talk past each other and use history for their own purposes—much like the characters in Porumboiu’s film.

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

The mayoral election in Warsaw on October 21, 2018, was really between two candidates: Rafał Trzaskowski and PiS’s candidate Patryk Jaki, a bold 33-year-old deputy minister of justice. Despite Jaki’s energetic campaign, Trzaskowski won with over 56 percent of the vote, compared to Jaki’s 28 percent. That Warsaw chose the more liberal candidate is itself not surprising. Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, the city’s mayor since 2006 who decided not to run for a fourth term, was also a member of the liberal Civic Platform (PO) party. Yet the scope of Trzaskowski’s victory was unexpected; earlier, polls had suggested that he would need a second round two weeks later to beat Jaki.

His victory was greeted as a sign that PiS has reached a limit, at least in urban areas. PiS came first in the country’s sixteen regional assemblies, ahead of the PO-led centrist coalition. Yet it did poorly in the major cities, including Warsaw.

“A certain type was stopped,” Trzaskowski told Berlin Policy Journal in an interview, speaking English (one of his many languages) with an American accent. “People thought that PiS is indestructible, so this gave people a sense of empowerment, a sense that their vote counts. There was an incredible mobilization.”

Indeed, the voter turnout in Warsaw was almost 67 percent, compared to 47 percent in the previous local elections in 2014, and 54.8 percent of voters in Poland overall. That means that 250,000 more people voted this time. This record turnout reflects the sharp polarization between PiS and PO and the high stakes in Warsaw, both practical and symbolic. After the president, the post is the most high-profile directly elected post in Poland. Indeed, Lech Kaczyński—the late twin brother of PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński—served as mayor of Warsaw from 2002 until 2005 before being elected president of Poland.

A Warsaw native, Trzaskowski grew up in an intellectual household in the city’s Old Town. His father, Andrzej Trzaskowski, was a jazz composer, and his great-grandfather Bronisław a 19th century linguist. The young Trzaskowski studied English and International Relations at Warsaw University. After a Masters at the College of Europe’s branch in Natolin, Warsaw, he worked as a lecturer and wrote his PhD on the European Union. In the run-up to Poland’s EU accession in 2004, he was an adviser to the secretary of the European Integration Committee’s Office and then to PO’s delegation to the European Parliament.

High Achiever

His political debut came in 2009, when he was elected as an MEP. He stepped down in 2013 to become a minister in Tusk’s government, responsible for administration and digitization. When Tusk left for Brussels in 2014, Trzaskowski became deputy foreign minister for European affairs. But one year later, PiS won the parliamentary elections, forcing Trzaskowski and PO into opposition. While PiS busied itself overhauling the Polish public media and judiciary, Trzaskowski found that he could now do relatively little as an MP.

“My decision to run for mayor of Warsaw was simple. I was in parliament for three years. It was incredibly frustrating, with the government just disregarding the opposition,” he says. “I am in politics because I want to change the reality. I’m not there just to wander around the corridors or be on TV. So, I decided that if you want to change reality, you’ve got to be where the fight is.”

As mayor, Trzaskowski plans to focus on twelve areas, from free nurseries for all children in the Polish capital to fighting smog via better public transport and more greenery. “My program is about quality of life in Warsaw, focusing on the disabled, senior citizens, education, and sustainable growth. There is so much to be achieved,” he says.

For Trzaskowski, this represents a shift away from Gronkiewicz-Waltz’s emphasis on large infrastructure projects, toward smaller tweaks that make the city more liveable and inclusive. In 2019, Warsaw will have a budget of over 18 billion złoty (€4.2 billion), including a record 4.4 billion for education―though Trzaskowski is hoping for EU funds to help expand the city’s metro network. He also plans to appoint a representative for women’s affairs and to work with the local LGBT community.

“Islands of Freedom”

“With PiS governing Poland, there are these islands of freedom that you can develop against the prevailing trend,” he adds, referring to how urban voters have pushed back against PiS’s social conservatism and disregard for judicial independence.

As an expert on EU politics in both theory and practice, Trzaskowski is critical of how the Polish government has handled its dispute with the European Commission over its reform of the Supreme Court, which officials in Brussels warn undermines the rule of law.

“The problem with them is that they are so unprofessional. They are losing battle after battle because there is no sense of ownership. The prime minister is not the one making the final decision, it’s Kaczyński,” he explains, referring to PiS’s chairman, who is considered Poland’s real leader. “If you want to be effective in the EU, sometimes you have to build coalitions, propose things, cooperate with others. They still think in terms of ‘us’ versus ‘them’.”

Although PiS figures, including Kaczyński, say they oppose a “Polexit,” Trzaskowski warns that the government’s behavior will marginalize Poland in the EU. “They do not understand that unless you build a community together, sooner or later you will be out of it, either formally or in reality,” he explains.

Cheer to the Opposition

As Poland gears up for parliamentary elections in late 2019, Trzaskowski’s victory has cheered up the opposition, though PiS continues to lead in country-wide polls. At a PO gathering with journalists at a restaurant in Warsaw in late November, the mood was optimistic. In 2015, winning the presidential election helped PiS win the parliamentary elections that autumn. Similarly, if PO does well in the European elections in May 2019, it could pick up the momentum needed to win the parliamentary elections that autumn, senior party figures suggested. After that, they hope that Tusk will run for president in 2020 and defeat the PiS-allied incumbent, Andrzej Duda. Tusk’s term as president of the European Council ends in late 2019, but he has so far not said whether he plans to return to Polish politics.

Ahead of its next confrontations with PiS, what has PO learned from the Warsaw mayoral elections? “Above all, that it’s very important to work a lot and mobilize,” Trzaskowski replies, referring to the high turnout in Warsaw and more generally. “You must focus on what you really want to achieve and not be distracted by the media or the Twitter bubble.”

Long branded an expert in politics rather than a politician, has Trzaskowski emerged from the Warsaw mayoral race now as the real thing? “I became a politician a long, long time ago, when I found that it is impossible to be an expert in politics,” he shrugs. “Even as an MEP, I found out that you cannot be half-pregnant. If you are a politician, you have to fully be a politician.”

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© Agencja Gazeta/Slawomir Kaminski via REUTERS

On Friday, February 16, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host new Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. In her own words, it will be an occasion to open “a new chapter in German-Polish relations.” However, she acknowledged “divergent views on some issues,” though in her weekly podcast she declined to comment on a new Polish law that makes it illegal to accuse the country of complicity in Nazi atrocities, saying she did not want to wade into Poland’s internal affairs.

Such reticence from the German chancellor is understandable considering how important it is for her to set relations with Poland on the right track. And in the person of new Prime Minister Morawiecki, appointed only two months ago, Merkel might have the best partner she could hope for from the current ruling camp in Warsaw. In fact, the recent government reshuffle in Poland and Morawiecki’s promotion to the office of prime minister indicate two things:

First, on the domestic front, the traditional conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party is focused on moving the party toward the political center—at least in terms of its image—and winning over new voters, and its efforts are already paying off: the ruling party’s approval numbers have recently been over 45 percent. It seems as though the PiS is trying to avoid rocking the boat in the hopes of winning another convincing mandate in the 2019 elections.

Second, PiS leader Jaroslav Kaczynski wanted to improve Poland’s position in Europe. In light of the sanctions procedure initiated under Article 7 of the EU Treaty in December 2017 and the upcoming negotiations concerning the next EU budget, Warsaw has been using a much friendlier and more constructive tone with Brussels and Berlin. Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz paid a fence-mending visit to Berlin in mid-January. When he stated that the debate concerning war reparations that PiS hard-liners started last year should not undermine bilateral ties, it was widely noted, even sparking criticism back home.

Reviving the Dialogue

And while the PiS government is visibly trying to revive its dialogue with Berlin, it is still not clear how much space to maneuver Prime Minister Morawiecki and his Foreign Minister will get from Chairman Kaczynski; after all, Poland’s ruling party is sticking firm to its own political priorities as well.

Warsaw and Berlin have different expectations of the relationship. We initiated a series of commentaries on the state of play of German–Polish relations in the Tagesspiegel and Rzeczpospolita to set the agenda for a possible rapprochement. Poland’s expectations were expressed very clearly by Marek Cichocki, a professor at the Collegium Civitas in Warsaw and former EU advisor to the late Polish President Lech Kaczynski (brother of the PiS Chairman): rather than find fault with Polish policy, he appealed to the Germans to recognize and respect Poland’s economic significance and its security concerns and come off their normative high horses. Cichocki complained above all about the lack of a “common European agenda” between the two countries, which remains absent many years after the the EU expanded eastward.

From the German perspective, however, this “common European agenda” of both countries was already a reality. Until the the center-right, pro-European Civic Platform (PO) party lost power to the PiS in autumn of 2015, the German-Polish relationship was considered better than ever before, including in the European context. From Berlin’s point of view, Poland left the pro-European course when it chose the PiS government, and its recent judicial reform was merely the most recent outrage in a series of measures that call European values and the rule of law into question, principles Poland committed to when it joined the union.

From Berlin’s point of view, any rapprochement between Warsaw and Berlin must include Polish concessions and cooperation at the EU level, and go beyond mere rhetoric. Warsaw, on the other hand, wants more acceptance, recognition, and understanding for Poland’s interests, especially where the upcoming EU reforms initiated by France are concerned, which it fears might leave Warsaw and other Eastern member states even more marginalized than before.

Confrontation Having Paid Off

While both sides have a clear interest in improving the relationship, each expects the other to make the first move. At the same time, neither country has much political maneuvering room. Poland’s strategic focus is on its national agenda and bilateral relationships, while Berlin is looking at the EU level. These dynamics will only get worse under the new Polish government; so far, Warsaw’s confrontational stance toward Germany and Brussels has paid off politically.

For the new German government, this will be an extremely difficult situation to manage. On the one hand, Merkel has made it clear that “holding together by surrendering liberal values” would mean that the EU was “no longer the European Union.” On the other hand, Berlin has absolutely no interest in an even deeper rift between the EU’s East and West. Especially for Germany, an EU without Poland and the Central and Eastern European states is unthinkable.

In the current draft of the new government’s coalition agreement between the CDU, CSU, and SPD, the value of the German-Polish relationship in the current chapter of the European project is made clear: “The German-Polish partnership is particularly significant for us,” it reads. The new government wants to increase cooperation with Poland, especially with Polish civil society. Furthermore, “We will intensify our cooperation with France and Poland in the so-called Weimar Triangle.”

Securing Cohesion

It will be Berlin’s task to secure EU cohesion and keep the Central and Eastern European states on board during the upcoming European reform process. Poland can play a key role in this, and the German government should use every opportunity for more dialogue and cooperation with Warsaw, taking the new government’s outstretched hand—if for no other reason than because it is not likely to find a better partner in Poland for the foreseeable future.

Berlin should signal to the new Polish government that playing a constructive role in the EU could open many doors in the future. Both sides should try to isolate the sanctions issue and prevent it from escalating in a way that would prevent any future rapprochement. At the moment, Poland’s potential as an important partner to not just Germany but also to non-euro countries like Sweden and the Czech Republic is going to waste. Once the UK leaves the EU, the largest member state outside of the eurozone will be Poland, which gives Warsaw a chance to become a leader of the non-euro club, not to mention its capacity to act as an advocate for countries on the EU’s eastern borders.

If the Morawiecki government wants to influence the next German government’s EU policy, it should try to see Berlin as a potential partner once again, one that could be won over to ideas and projects. The Polish prime minister’s visit on February 16 offers a perfect opportunity. The same goes for the EU level—a country that wants to be part of determining the next phase of EU reform has to work productively in Brussels, and cannot simply retreat behind its national hedge. The keys are thus in both Berlin and Warsaw.

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© REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

There is no question that 2018 will be another challenging year for the European Union, with Brexit negotiations moving to the next phase, Germany’s prolonged political uncertainty, and Italy’s pending election—but deciding how to deal with the bloc’s increasingly “illiberal” member states might prove to be the most difficult of them all.

Hungary and Poland continue to challenge the EU’s authority as their nationalist governments undermine the rule of law at home and common EU policies on the European stage. Both had refused to comply with an EU decision to relocate asylum seekers from Greece and Italy at the peak of the migration crisis in 2015, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made it clear he will not back down.

Meanwhile, Poland’s dramatic overhaul of the judiciary last year created the deepest rift with the EU since eastward enlargement of the bloc in 2004. In December, the European Commission launched for the first time the so-called “nuclear option” – the Article 7 sanctions procedure against Poland for creating a “clear risk of a serious breach of rule of law.” Article 7 was introduced as a check on member states to prevent them from violating European values and the rule of law.

However, real sanctions are a distant possibility: all 27 member states would need to agree to levy sanctions and suspend voting rights, and Hungary has already vowed to veto any decision against Poland. As a sign of the ever-closer ties between the two countries, the new Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki traveled to Budapest on his first official foreign visit in January.

The EU has been trying to align Warsaw and Budapest with EU rules and values at the core of the European project, but it has struggled to tame these two governments on rolling back the rule of law and democracy. A lack of political willingness among fellow member states to sanction one of their peers has been one of the reasons, but the EU also has a poor toolkit to discipline governments on the rule of law.

Frustration Boiling Over

As discussions on the next seven-year EU budget get under way in Brussels this year, there is increasing support among member states who pay more into the EU budget than they get back to tie EU funds not only to economic performance, but also to respect for the rule of law.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel already warned Hungary in September 2017 that it could lose EU funds if it failed to comply with an earlier European Court of Justice ruling on accepting refugees based on quotas. At the end of last October, EU justice commissioner Vera Jourova backed up earlier proposals from the EU executive on tying EU funds to rule of law adherence. “In my personal view we should consider creating stronger conditionality between the rule of law and the cohesion funds,” she said at a conference in Helsinki. “Countries where we have doubts about the rule of law should face tougher scrutiny and checks.”

Juho Romakkaniemi, the head of cabinet of the EU Commission vice president, suggested in a tweet that EU countries might become reluctant to support countries where EU core values are challenged. At a meeting of EU ministers in November, Germany, France, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Italy, and Sweden indicated they were in favor of linking EU funds to the respect of the rule of law. Last November several high profile former European officials, including Pascal Lamy and Hans Eichel, also argued for linking up funds with political conditions; they urged the EU Commission to suspend EU funds to Hungary because basic freedoms are being violated and corruption is soaring.

EU negotiations on the next budget will kick off in May, and the proverbial battle lines have been drawn. The stakes are high: the EU allocated €86 billion in structural funds to Poland in the current 2014-20 period, while Hungary is receiving €25 billion during the same timeframe.

As the Commission gears up to present its proposals, the budget commissioner Günther Oettinger in January said the EU executive is looking into the legal feasibility of linking EU funds to the respect for the rule of law. He pointed out that for the conditionality to become reality, all member states would have to agree—making any radical move almost impossible.

What Comes Around Goes Around

Linking EU funds to political conditions goes against the EU treaties, central and eastern European officials argue. “I think these proposals are stillborn. The EU is based on treaties, and there is nothing in there that would create this possibility [of linking funds to the rule of law],” Viktor Orbán said late December in a radio interview. His government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs has called it a form of “political blackmail.” Orbán also warned that the EU budget needed to be approved unanimously among EU countries, so Hungary has ample tools to stop this proposal from becoming reality.

Central and eastern European officials point out that taxpayers in the net contributing countries also benefit from the EU cohesion funds. They say profits on the investments fuelled by EU funds trickle back to the West. Poland’s deputy minister for economic development Jerzy Kwiecinski said in October that for every euro invested in cohesion funds, 80 cents go back to EU-15, the net contributors. Even commissioner Oettinger underlined this notion in an interview in early 2017. “The Poles use the money to place orders with the German construction industry, to buy German machines and German trucks. So net contributors such as Germany should be interested in the structural funds. From an economic perspective, Germany isn’t a net contributor but a net recipient,” he said.

Officials also warn that EU funds are one of the reasons why support for the EU among the population of central European countries is still high despite a general sense of lack of trust in the EU on the continent. Central and eastern European officials controversially argue that EU funds are not charity, but a necessary compensation for opening their markets to the rest of the EU when their post-communist economies were still weak and vulnerable in the 2000s. “Don’t try to suggest that [the] EU cohesion fund is a gift for central and eastern member states,” spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said in Brussels last September.

The issue is politically toxic, as it reinforces the notion in central and eastern Europe that its citizens are only second-class in the EU. But that notion—while alive and well on its own—is being thoroughly exploited by governments in Hungary and Poland. They argue that political conditions alone infringe upon national sovereignty. As discussion over the next budget—which will undoubtedly be smaller than the current one as the UK leaves the EU—heat up, so could tensions among the continent’s eastern and western flank.

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© Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea via REUTERS

The Visegrád Group has been a topic of discussion in Romania on only two occasions. The first was after it was created, on 15 February 1991. At the time, analysts in Bucharest believed that, because it was not invited to join the group, Romania would end up as a grey area, a buffer between the West and the Soviet Union. It is no wonder that then-President Ion Iliescu used this as leverage to sign a Treaty of Friendship with the USSR, which took place in Moscow on April 4, 1991; no one at the time could imagine that Romania could stand shoulder to shoulder with the V4 states, which had initiated reforms as early as the 1980s.

The second time the topic of the V4 came up was when President Klaus Iohannis rejected the idea of Romania moving closer to the Visegrád Group this year. In a statement issued on October 12, the president said: “In the last year, the Visegrád Group has certain opinions that are very different from our own, and at this time, in my opinion, a rapprochement between Romania and the Visegrád Group is not realistic.” Iohannis made this statement after a visit to the Ford factory in Craiova.

This came after an interview with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban featured in Romania’s Hungarian language press, in which Orban extended an invitation for cooperation with the V4, but not an offer to join: “The question is what the Romanians want. This is something for them to decide. By launching joint economic projects and setting joint goals in cooperation with the Hungarians, they could also be part of a great Central European success story. The bulk of the entire European Union’s economic growth comes from the Visegrád Four. In a ‘V4 + Romania’ formation, we could find a form of cooperation which would eventually lead to improved living standards, greater security, and better prospects for Romanians in Romania as well. We’re keeping this door open.”

What this illustrates is that, in talking about the future of Romanian relations with the V4, we are dealing with a misunderstanding: Romania does not want to join the V4, and the V4 never invited it to do so. So what is behind the furious debate surrounding this issue over the last few weeks?

The Visegrád Group, or a Orban Viktor Fan Club?

First of all, it should be stressed that the debate today in Romania is not so much about the V4, but more about Orban’s Hungary and its illiberal, euroskeptic model, which is controversial in Romania for several reasons.

For one, there are politicians in Romania who would eagerly emulate Orban’s control over his country’s judiciary. Senate Speaker Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu and the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Liviu Dragnea, are open fans of Orban, but for very personal reasons. Both are under judicial investigation, and both may receive court sentences. It is essential for them to gain control of the justice system and alter legislation to save themselves and their close associates from lengthy prison sentences. The greater part of the magistrate corps in Romania, most of the country’s civil society, a small part of the press (the part not controlled by owners who themselves are in legal trouble), and the European Commission have all opposed any such changes to legislation, and supported the independence of the country’s judicial system. A coalition of this size is hard to defeat, but not impossible, as Orban proved.

In fact, for Romanian politicians who feel stifled by Brussels, Orban is a legend, an outlaw who fights against European bureaucracy. This bureaucracy has disciplined the political class in Bucharest through the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, meaning that Orban, Dragnea, and Popescu-Tăriceanu have a common enemy – Brussels – but for different reasons.

Romania and the V4 Model

The second problem is what the V4 states have in common. They have an anti-immigration attitude, they accuse the EU of double standards in terms of food safety, they criticize the core states of the EU, and they believe they are persecuted and omitted from the decision-making process in Brussels.

Even if economic nationalism, populism, anti-Soros rhetoric, and anti-Western rhetoric have gained ground over the last year, the Orban model does not hold much appeal in Romania, no matter how much it is promoted by certain politicians. Both Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski are expressions of confidence in national authorities over international authorities. For Romanians, it is the other way around: Romanians value Brussels and Washington, and look down on the national political elite. This is a common mindset in Bucharest, where people believe that NATO and EU integration was achieved in spite of the establishment, not thanks to it. The most obvious expression of this lack of confidence in the future of the country is the fact that every year a large number of Romanian citizens continue to emigrate: around 4 million out of 22 million citizens have left Romania in the last quarter century.

The V4 model also has an important ideological component that Romanians reject. In his messages to Romania, Orban has emphasized the threat posed by migrants, the need to defend the eastern frontier, and Romania’s Christian future, expressing the hope that he would be able to collaborate with Bucharest on this basis. Simply reading these messages proves both the inadequacy of Orban’s approach and his lack of knowledge of the country to which they are addressed, a country that is not receptive to such ideological messages.

Romania has never had a close relationship with its neighbors, and has a tense history with some of them, Hungary first and foremost. Traditionally, it has relied on its Western allies, chiefly France and the UK. The institutions instrumental in its foreign and security policy are all Western-oriented – the foreign ministry, the defense ministry, and the intelligence services. In their view, the Russian threat is the greatest danger for Romania. Orban is seen by these power structures as a sort of lieutenant for Putin, with Romania apparently caught in a Russian-Hungarian vice. The influence of these institutions should not be underestimated, especially after the annexation of Crimea, as they have taken decisive control of Romania regional and security policy.

Bucharest has no plan for Romania to join the Visegrád Group; the conditions have not been met for such a plan to make sense. In Romanian public opinion, Hungary is Russia’s Trojan horse in NATO and the EU, and Romanians would have great reservations regarding any attempt to bring Bucharest and Budapest closer together.

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© Dominik Herrmann

Poland’s first openly gay city mayor, Robert Biedroń, is a fresh face on Poland’s political scene. He is well-traveled, multi-lingual, and secular, with human rights and sustainability as favorite subjects. While Poland has shifted to the right in recent years, Biedroń has been emerging as an icon of the liberal left. For the last three years, he has headed the administration of Słupsk, a city of 90,000 inhabitants on the Baltic coast of Poland. Now, the 41-year-old is tipped as a possible presidential candidate in the next election in 2020.

Biedroń’s popularity comes amid rising disillusionment among Polish liberals. Halfway through its parliamentary term, the governing Law and Justice Party (PiS) remains in the lead. One poll in October put support for the right-wing populist party at a record 47 percent, compared to 22 percent for the two main opposition parties combined. Meanwhile, many Polish liberals feel frustrated by the opposition’s lack of a convincing leader. Some hope that a “Polish Macron” will emerge to save Poland from the populist right. If Biedroń manages to capture those hopes, he could play a major role in Polish politics in the years ahead.

For all his urban image, Biedroń knows small-town Poland well. He was born in 1976 near Krosno, in the country’s rural, conservative southeast – now a PiS stronghold. As a gay teenager in the 1990s, he initially hid his sexual orientation, including at home. Visiting Berlin in 1995, he sought out Mann-O-Meter, an organization that provides help and advice for gay men. That trip spurred a lasting commitment to LGBT rights. In 2001, Biedroń founded his own organization, Campaign Against Homophobia. It now has branches in cities across Poland. Over the years, he has held a range of related roles in Poland and internationally, including general rapporteur on the rights of LGBT people at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

His Heart Beats on the Left

Politically, Biedroń says his heart beats on the left, a bold admission in today’s Poland, where “leftist-liberal” is a common insult on the right. He first got involved with the social democratic party while studying political science at university. His breakthrough came in 2011, when he was elected to parliament through a left-wing party led by eccentric businessman Janusz Palikot. Three years later he ran for mayor of Słupsk, now as an independent. He won 58 percent of the vote in the second round, beating the candidate from the Civic Platform, one of Poland’s main opposition parties. His campaign centered on local issues; his private life did not play a role.

These days, many Poles’ primary association with Słupsk is Biedroń. As mayor, he has cultivated his image as a progressive by focusing on sustainable development: One of his advisers is a former leader of the Polish Green party. His development strategy envisions Słupsk as a “green city of the new generation.” Biedroń has made headlines with a series of animal-friendly gestures as well, for example preventing a circus with animals from performing in town. He is also known for cycling to work. Biedroń admits this kind of behavior might not raise eyebrows in a country like Sweden; in Poland, though, it still makes news.

From Słupsk, Biedroń has been a firm critic of the PiS government. The governing party is locked in a protracted dispute with the European Union, which is accusing Warsaw of undermining the rule of law. For Biedroń, the antidote to PiS’s power grab is to bolster civil society. “Whatever happens in public life ought to interest us, because that public life – politics – will sooner or later knock on our door,” he said at a popular music festival this summer. While he remains upbeat about Poland’s political future, he is aware that PiS’s controversial changes will not be reversed overnight. “Poles need to be told that normality will not return at once,” he warned in an in-depth interview published last year, suitably entitled Pod Prąd (Against the Current). “What has been damaged over the years cannot be rebuilt in a few months.”

On the Fringes, for Now

Meanwhile, he has kept his distance from Poland’s centrist opposition, which remains split between two main parties – the Civic Platform (PO), Donald Tusk’s former party, and Nowoczesna, a more liberal party founded in 2015. In Pod Prąd, Biedroń did not mince words about Poland’s previous PO-led government: During its eight years in power, PO “invested in cement, but did not crush mental cement,” he said. This reflects political differences between Biedroń and the two opposition parties, including their reluctance to stand up for LGBT rights. There is a tactical element as well: By guarding his independence, Biedroń remains untarnished by the opposition’s shortcomings. In a recent radio interview, he urged the leaders of PO and Nowoczesna to get their acts together and present an attractive alternative to PiS. “I invite them to Słupsk – I’ll show them how it’s done,” he quipped.

For now, Biedroń has remained on the fringes of Polish national politics, focusing on tangible changes in Słupsk. Yet many hope that he will take a stand when the right time comes. When Andrzej Duda, the PiS candidate, was elected president in 2015, Biedroń posted on Facebook: “Today modern Poland lost. […] The president of the future will be chosen in five years’ time. We’ll manage!” More than 50,000 people liked the post; Biedroń’s supporters urged him to run in 2020.

A Presidential Hopeful?

Polls already place him among the top three favorites for president after Duda and Tusk. A poll this summer put Biedroń in third place, with 16 percent, behind current president Andrzej Duda, who had 36 percent, and Tusk with 21 percent. With Duda just halfway through his term, many questions remain. The biggest is whether Tusk will run for president, as his supporters hope. His second term as president of the European Council ends in November 2019, too late to lead PO in the parliamentary elections due that autumn, but in time to launch a presidential campaign.

For now, Poland is gearing up for local elections in late 2018. Biedroń says he wants to win a second term in Słupsk, despite earlier speculation on the left that he might be a good candidate for the mayor of Warsaw. Biedroń has not yet committed to running for the presidency either. Yet polls like the one that put him clearly ahead of Poland’s struggling left-wing parties indicate that he does have broader appeal.

Following the presidential election in France this summer, Biedroń posted a meme on Facebook featuring photos of Macron and himself on their bikes side by side. “Supposedly similar,” his caption read. Again, the comments below the post were enthusiastic.

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