On May 18, Poles will vote in the first round of the country’s presidential election – the result of which will not only determine whether Prime Minister Donald Tusk can deliver on his centrist agenda but may reflect the appetite for far-right politics across Europe.
Tusk’s Civic Platform party leads a coalition that came to power in 2023, defeating the far-right Law and Justice Party (PiS) after eight years in office. His victory was built on a vision of helping ‘Poland regain its position as a leader of the European Union’ and rebuilding its institutions, after what his supporters saw as a decade of nationalist purging.
The reforms enacted by the anti-EU PiS and its leader, Andrzej Duda, included taking control of Poland’s public broadcaster, rejecting EU migrant quotas, appointing ultra-conservative judges to the constitutional court and implementing an almost total ban on abortion.
‘Tusk’s victory 18 months ago was seen as a model for how to defeat the kind of right-wing conservative, anti-establishment parties that have gained so much ground in recent European elections,’ says Aleks Szczerbiak, a politics professor at the University of Sussex. ‘This election will show to what extent the Polish electorate has rejected that kind of politics.’
Legislative deadlock
Although Tusk won the parliamentary elections in 2023, Duda still holds executive power as president. In Poland, foreign policy and defence fall under the president’s prerogative and he has the authority to veto legislation passed by parliament. Duda is not standing in May, and the next parliamentary election is not due until the end of 2027, but the presidential poll is widely seen as a referendum on Civic Coalition’s record over the past two years.
That record is mixed, says Armida van Rij, senior research fellow at Chatham House’s Europe programme. ‘Tusk was elected, in part, on a platform to undo the damage inflicted on Poland’s democratic institutions, but his government has been hamstrung by President Duda’s power of veto. On high-profile issues such as abortion laws, Tusk has struggled to make progress,’ she said.
The government’s efforts to depoliticize the judiciary have also faced obstacles. At the same time, Tusk has been criticized for what some see as his heavy-handed approach to rooting out PiS influence from state institutions. In 2024, Tusk recalled more than 50 ambassadors appointed by the former right-wing government, insisting the move was not retaliatory. Despite all this, Rafal Trzaskowski, the presidential candidate backed by Civic Coalition, is currently ahead in the polls.
‘Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, is running on a platform of greater unity and economic progress,’ says Wojciech Przybylski, editor-in-chief of Visegrad Insight. ‘With a rating of 33 per cent, it’s striking that Trzaskowski is now polling above the Civic Coalition party of Donald Tusk, who endorsed him.’
Trzaskowski, who comes from the more progressive wing of the coalition, has already outlined a package of liberal laws he intends to enact ‘in the first hours and days after winning the election’. These include tackling inflation and reversing the ‘medieval anti-abortion law’.
Strengthening Poland’s relations with its EU and Nato allies is another priority, which Trzaskowski says would mean increasing Poland’s defence spending – already proportionately the highest in Nato. Tusk’s party is hoping its candidate can mobilize enough voters in May to end its two-year deadlock within the executive branch, says Szczerbiak. ‘This would allow the party to finally undo the remainder of its predecessor’s legacy.’