The other President Donald
by Isabelle Roussel and Biodun Iginla, News Analysts, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Brussels
The new government’s obsession with punishing the former Polish prime minister leaves it isolated in Europe
DONALD TUSK’S appointment as president of the European Council in 2014 seemed to cap Poland’s journey to the heart of the European Union. Twenty-five years after the collapse of communism and a decade after Poland led the accession of eight former Soviet-bloc countries to the EU, its prime minister was elevated by his peers to one of the most senior posts in Brussels. It was hard to imagine a more potent sign of the healing of Europe’s post-war scars.
The job of council president, which involves chairing summits of European leaders and channelling their tempestuous debates into compromise, is a profound test of political nous. Not everyone was happy with Mr Tusk’s early performance; some thought he was operating more like the Polish prime minister he was from 2007-14 than the consensus-seeking European they sought. But most came around as Mr Tusk coolly shepherded the EU through a series of sticky situations, from a Greek bail-out to the refugee crisis to Brexit. His election to a second two-and-a-half-year term, due at an EU summit on March 9th, looked like a formality.
Instead, Mr Tusk found his home country blocking the path, and a Polish political psychodrama imported to Brussels. Earlier this week Beata Szydlo, Poland’s prime minister, circulated an extraordinary letter to her fellow heads of government more or less accusing Mr Tusk of high treason. “He used his EU function to engage personally in a political dispute in Poland,” she wrote. “We cannot accept such conduct.” This may be a reference to a speech Mr Tusk made in Wroclaw last year that called on the government to “respect the people, the principles and values of the constitution”. Ms Szydlo nominated Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, an obscure member of the European Parliament who helped negotiate Poland’s EU accession, to replace Mr Tusk.
In the end the matter fell to a vote at the summit; itself an unusual development in a forum that prefers consensus. And despite speculation that Hungary, which often allies with Poland against Brussels, might support the Polish gambit, Mr Tusk was re-elected by 27 votes to one. If the re-elected president took the evening’s events in good grace, promising to act in the interests of all the EU’s members, the Polish government showed no such magnanimity in defeat. Ms Szydlo sulkily blocked the summit’s conclusions on matters like trade, defence, and instability in the Western Balkans, an act without legal significance that will nonetheless cement Poland’s image as the EU’s diplomatic problem child.
Most EU countries consider it a badge of honour to see a compatriot in a top job, and most ordinary Poles backed Mr Tusk’s re-election. What explains the government’s hostility? Animosity between Mr Tusk and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who as head of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is the true leader of Poland, has dominated Polish politics for over a decade. Mr Kaczynski blames Mr Tusk for a plane accident in Smolensk in 2010 that killed his twin brother Lech, then Poland’s president. Some PiS supporters believe Mr Tusk conspired with Vladimir Putin to bring down the plane and have called for him to face criminal charges; others highlight his grandfather’s brief, and forced, service in the Wehrmacht during the war. By smearing his archenemy as a traitor, Mr Kaczynski plays to his conservative base and may hope to reduce Mr Tusk’s chances of making a triumphant return to Polish politics in time for the 2020 presidential election.
But Mr Kaczynski’s actions also reveal a deeper cleavage in Polish society. In the eyes of PiS and its supporters, Mr Tusk and his centre-right Civic Platform party exemplify a post-communist elite that sold out Polish interests after 1989. A histrionic anti-Tusk video published by PiS this week blames Mr Tusk for destroying the Polish shipbuilding industry and shows him cosying up to Brussels power-brokers. “The good news,” Mr Kaczynski said after his defeat yesterday, “is that Poland has regained the empowerment and sovereignty previously destroyed by Civic Platform.” The strong relationship Mr Tusk forged with Germany during his time in office—one of the happier European stories of the 2000s—is now turned against a man PiS dismisses as “the German candidate”. Last night Witold Waszczykowski, Poland’s outspoken foreign minister, said the vote in Brussels proved that the EU is now “under Berlin’s diktat”, and vowed to investigate whether it was fixed.
Mr Tusk is hardly the only target of the paranoid conspiracy theories that have become official doctrine in Poland. PiS has pursued a worrying policy of polarisation since regaining power from Civic Platform in 2015. Mr Kaczynski’s government portrays its political opponents as enemies of the state; it has purged official institutions to cement its own vision of the post-1989 revolution, and has turned state media into a mouthpiece of the regime. And the tactics appear to be working: if membership of the EU remains popular among Poles, so does the government, which dominates opinion polls.
Meanwhile Poland is drifting ever further from the European mainstream. From energy to climate to the preparations for a big EU summit in Rome this month, diplomats and officials describe a government that is becoming increasingly hard to work with. It has packed the constitutional court with pliant judges, sparking a huge battle with the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. Some urge the commission to trigger Article 7 of the EU treaty, the yet unused “nuclear option” that could see Poland’s EU voting rights suspended. (Commission officials say they would prefer other governments to act first, a plea that may find receptive ears after yesterday’s debacle.)
Poland was the giant of the accession class of 2004. The economic success and diplomatic clout it enjoyed inside the EU were an inspiration for others, including European countries yet to join. The government will be the first victim of the futile diplomatic to-do it inspired; it can hardly expect generous treatment in the forthcoming negotiations over the EU budget, for example. But its antics make a mockery of the unity the EU has vowed to pursue after the wrench of Brexit. Yesterday Mr Tusk warned that burned bridges cannot be crossed again. But Mr Kaczynski appears to be in the grip of full-blown pyromania.
The job of council president, which involves chairing summits of European leaders and channelling their tempestuous debates into compromise, is a profound test of political nous. Not everyone was happy with Mr Tusk’s early performance; some thought he was operating more like the Polish prime minister he was from 2007-14 than the consensus-seeking European they sought. But most came around as Mr Tusk coolly shepherded the EU through a series of sticky situations, from a Greek bail-out to the refugee crisis to Brexit. His election to a second two-and-a-half-year term, due at an EU summit on March 9th, looked like a formality.
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In the end the matter fell to a vote at the summit; itself an unusual development in a forum that prefers consensus. And despite speculation that Hungary, which often allies with Poland against Brussels, might support the Polish gambit, Mr Tusk was re-elected by 27 votes to one. If the re-elected president took the evening’s events in good grace, promising to act in the interests of all the EU’s members, the Polish government showed no such magnanimity in defeat. Ms Szydlo sulkily blocked the summit’s conclusions on matters like trade, defence, and instability in the Western Balkans, an act without legal significance that will nonetheless cement Poland’s image as the EU’s diplomatic problem child.
Most EU countries consider it a badge of honour to see a compatriot in a top job, and most ordinary Poles backed Mr Tusk’s re-election. What explains the government’s hostility? Animosity between Mr Tusk and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who as head of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is the true leader of Poland, has dominated Polish politics for over a decade. Mr Kaczynski blames Mr Tusk for a plane accident in Smolensk in 2010 that killed his twin brother Lech, then Poland’s president. Some PiS supporters believe Mr Tusk conspired with Vladimir Putin to bring down the plane and have called for him to face criminal charges; others highlight his grandfather’s brief, and forced, service in the Wehrmacht during the war. By smearing his archenemy as a traitor, Mr Kaczynski plays to his conservative base and may hope to reduce Mr Tusk’s chances of making a triumphant return to Polish politics in time for the 2020 presidential election.
But Mr Kaczynski’s actions also reveal a deeper cleavage in Polish society. In the eyes of PiS and its supporters, Mr Tusk and his centre-right Civic Platform party exemplify a post-communist elite that sold out Polish interests after 1989. A histrionic anti-Tusk video published by PiS this week blames Mr Tusk for destroying the Polish shipbuilding industry and shows him cosying up to Brussels power-brokers. “The good news,” Mr Kaczynski said after his defeat yesterday, “is that Poland has regained the empowerment and sovereignty previously destroyed by Civic Platform.” The strong relationship Mr Tusk forged with Germany during his time in office—one of the happier European stories of the 2000s—is now turned against a man PiS dismisses as “the German candidate”. Last night Witold Waszczykowski, Poland’s outspoken foreign minister, said the vote in Brussels proved that the EU is now “under Berlin’s diktat”, and vowed to investigate whether it was fixed.
Mr Tusk is hardly the only target of the paranoid conspiracy theories that have become official doctrine in Poland. PiS has pursued a worrying policy of polarisation since regaining power from Civic Platform in 2015. Mr Kaczynski’s government portrays its political opponents as enemies of the state; it has purged official institutions to cement its own vision of the post-1989 revolution, and has turned state media into a mouthpiece of the regime. And the tactics appear to be working: if membership of the EU remains popular among Poles, so does the government, which dominates opinion polls.
Meanwhile Poland is drifting ever further from the European mainstream. From energy to climate to the preparations for a big EU summit in Rome this month, diplomats and officials describe a government that is becoming increasingly hard to work with. It has packed the constitutional court with pliant judges, sparking a huge battle with the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. Some urge the commission to trigger Article 7 of the EU treaty, the yet unused “nuclear option” that could see Poland’s EU voting rights suspended. (Commission officials say they would prefer other governments to act first, a plea that may find receptive ears after yesterday’s debacle.)
Poland was the giant of the accession class of 2004. The economic success and diplomatic clout it enjoyed inside the EU were an inspiration for others, including European countries yet to join. The government will be the first victim of the futile diplomatic to-do it inspired; it can hardly expect generous treatment in the forthcoming negotiations over the EU budget, for example. But its antics make a mockery of the unity the EU has vowed to pursue after the wrench of Brexit. Yesterday Mr Tusk warned that burned bridges cannot be crossed again. But Mr Kaczynski appears to be in the grip of full-blown pyromania.
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