WARSAW — Poland’s halting effort to restore the rule of law and fully return to the EU mainstream will be decided in Sunday’s presidential vote.
Liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, backed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, is neck-and-neck with right-winger Karol Nawrocki, supported by the populist-nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) opposition party.
If Trzaskowski wins, he promises to speed up efforts to restore the rule of law, currently stalled by PiS-aligned incumbent President Andrzej Duda. But a Nawrocki victory would block Tusk’s government for the remainder of its term.
Sunday’s outcome means either a clean break with Poland’s past as one of the bad boys of the EU, or a return to a more turbulent relationship with Brussels. When PiS was in power from 2015 to 2023, Warsaw tangled with the EU over its tough abortion laws, freedom of speech, clampdowns on LGBTQ+ rights, corruption, and backsliding on the rule of law.
Tusk’s 2023 victory ended many of those tensions, a process that would be finalized with a Trzaskowski win. If Nawrocki becomes president, however, Tusk will have a very difficult time clearing the agenda of the difficulties of the past.
Tusk’s people blame the slow pace of change on Duda — highlighting the need for a change of president.
“We haven’t delivered on rule of law, that’s right. The responsibility lies with the man currently residing in the presidential palace,” Paweł Śliz, an MP for the Third Way, one of Tusk’s coalition allies and the head of the parliamentary Justice and Human Rights Committee, told POLITICO.
Under Tusk, Poland is back as one of the leading countries in the EU, setting the bloc’s direction alongside Germany and France. But his core promise of undoing the legal changes pushed through by PiS in the eight years it ruled Poland has fallen flat.
“There is really nothing more important for a modern nation than a set of rights and duties recognized as common, without exception,” Tusk told the parliament in his inaugural address as Poland’s new prime minister in December 2023.
PiS deeply changed Poland’s legal system during its eight years in power, such as by putting a key judge-appointing body under its political control. As a result, Brussels and international law watchdogs accused it of politicizing courts and judges, with the EU freezing over €100 billion in funds in retaliation.
The Commission has since unblocked the cash, but largely on the basis of Tusk’s promises rather than an actual rollback of the PiS-era reforms.
That could change after Sunday’s vote.
On the campaign trail, Trzaskowski has promised to fix rule-of-law problems. “I will certainly sign a bill to put an end to chaos and dualism in the judiciary,” he said in January.
Tusk and other coalition leaders pleaded with voters last Sunday to back Trzaskowski. “It’s now or never,” Tusk told some 150,000 people who turned up in Warsaw for a rally to encourage high turnout on June 1.
“Trzaskowski is expected to be a president who will smoothly cooperate with the Tusk government on all fronts and in particular when it comes to the rule of law,” said Jakub Jaraczewski, a researcher at Reporting Democracy, a think tank focused on rule of law across the EU.
But Nawrocki, for his part, blames Tusk for Poland’s rule-of-law problems. He has promised to keep PiS-appointed judges and to slow reform of the judge-appointing system.
“Nawrocki is expected to be the polar opposite — a likely complete blocker of any initiatives of the coalition on the rule-of-law front. The restoration of an independent judiciary in Poland is literally on the ballot on Sunday — even if, paradoxically, it occupies next to zero space in the campaign debate,” Jaraczewski added.
Duda plays blocker
The president insists that the legal changes he approved under the former PiS government should not be undone.
Duda has been able to stymie Tusk’s efforts, such as by vetoing key bills to reform the National Council of the Judiciary, a judge-appointing body that is at the heart of the changes PiS introduced. Efforts to revamp electoral laws skewed under PiS have also come to little. The governing coalition doesn’t have the votes in parliament to override the president.
Duda has also sent other bills for study to the PiS-dominated Constitutional Tribunal, a top court, which in reality kills them. The Tusk government refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the tribunal, as some judges were appointed in questionable fashion, so it ignores unfavorable verdicts.
Duda has also blocked efforts to replace senior officials and PiS-appointed ambassadors.
A Nawrocki win would continue that policy of obstruction, representing a huge political danger for Tusk. Opinion polls show support for his coalition eroding as voters grow frustrated over its inability to follow through on most of the promises it made during the 2023 campaign — ranging from undoing PiS’s legal reforms to prosecuting former officials on allegations of wrongdoing, changing Poland’s draconian abortion laws and more.
“A victory for Mr Trzaskowski will provide the Tusk government with renewed momentum and a clear two-and-a-half-year run before the next parliamentary election, during which it can rebuild its support base and restore a sense of purpose,” wrote Aleks Szczerbiak, a professor at the University of Sussex who studies Polish politics.
As president, Trzaskowski would spur a flood of legislation, said Śliz, the Tusk-led coalition MP.
“These laws should reach him as quickly as possible. These include [reforming] the National Council of the Judiciary, getting the Constitutional Tribunal in order, and separating the roles of prosecutor and justice minister,” he said.
But even if Trzaskowski replaces Duda, a return to the pre-PiS era is out of the question, said Maria Skóra, a political analyst and a visiting researcher at the European Policy Centre.
The problem is that the PiS-sponsored changes to the judiciary have taken root, with hundreds of judges — who the Tusk government says were wrongfully appointed — carrying out daily work affecting thousands of people.
“All these actions aimed at restoring the rule of law should ensure that citizens are not harmed, because if we have court rulings issued daily, abruptly cancelling them or overturning them would cause tremendous chaos,” Skóra said.
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