Conservative candidate Karol Nawrocki, a historian who has played up a tough-guy image while brandishing his support from US President Donald Trump, delivered a major upset by beating Warsaw's liberal mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski, in Poland's Presidential election on June 1.
Nawrocki won the election with 50.89 percent of the votes, dealing a major set-back for Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a close ally of Trzaskowski, and boosts the hope of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, which backed Nawrocki, to return to power in 2027 – or potentially even earlier.
The 42-year-old differs from some of the region's other eurosceptics like Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico or Viktor Orban, Hungary's prime minister.
Unlike them, Nawrocki supports aid to Ukraine in its war against invading Russian forces. But has said flat out that he opposes NATO membership for Ukraine, a view more and more Poles appear to share.
"Nawrocki will take a firm stance against Russia’s imperial ambitions. He is a strong supporter of NATO and the alliance with the United States, and he will continue Poland’s active role in the region. He will also back Ukraine in its fight against Russia," said Slawomir Debski, visiting professor of strategy and international relations at the College of Europe in Warsaw.
"However, his victory is also partly a reaction to [Ukrainian] President Zelenskyy’s public disrespect toward [outgoing Polish] President [Andrzej] Duda—especially his 2023 speech at the UN General Assembly, where he compared Poland to Russia. For Nawrocki’s voters, that was unacceptable. Ukraine can no longer take Poland for granted."
This election was widely regarded as Trzaskowski’s to lose.
He was narrowly beaten by Duda in the last presidential election in 2020 and was until recently seen as the clear favorite to win this time around.
While he did finish on top in the first round two weeks ago with 31.3 percent, Nawrocki’s strong showing then -- finishing less than two percentage points behind -- and the fact the candidates that ended up third and fourth were even more conservative than Nawrocki, gave an early indication that a potential surprise was on the cards.
Perhaps the biggest take-away is that none of the media scandals surrounding Nawrocki in recent weeks appears to have failed to dent his rising popularity.
In fact, it appears that they might have boosted his appeal as an underdog.
The relatively unknown historian, who has headed both Gdansk’s Museum of the Second World War and the Institute for National Remembrance, has been accused of football hooliganism (which he doesn’t deny), links with gangsters and neo-Nazis, taking advantage of a senior citizen to get a flat on the cheap and to arrange prostitutes for guest at a seaside hotel he used to work as security guards for.
Trump Playbook
He has denied most of these reports as “lies,” and appeared to take a page from the same playbook as US President Donald Trump, whom he met earlier in May, accusing the media of “liberal bias” and being out of touch.
Nawrocki's campaign highlighted the strong support he has from the US, including an endorsement from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Poland where she likened him to Trump.
In a country that is ardently pro-American, sees Washington as its most important ally, and is home to over 10,000 U.S. soldiers, these types of endorsements matter.
While the role of the president in Poland is largely ceremonial it has one big power – the veto of legislation.
Duda has so far managed to block proposals such as prescription-free access to the morning-after pill and the official recognition of Silesian as a minority language.
He has also threatened to use it in case more liberal abortion laws came to his desk. Nawrocki is likely to be even more active in thwarting the government, including most of the reforms of the judiciary that Tusk has pledged to undertake after winning the parliamentary elections in late 2023 after eight years of PiS-dominance.
Those years were characterized by plenty of bad blood between Brussels and Warsaw, with notably the European Commission taking the country to court over what it saw as numerous instances of politicizing the judiciary.
Don’t expect to see a return to this quite yet.
A Threat To Tusk's Power?
But the question for how long Tusk’s broad coalition, which apart from his moderate Civic Platform (PO), also contains left-wing and more conservative agrarian parties, will hold. His government isn’t popular, having failed to bring about the sweeping changes it promised two years ago.
In fact, Nawrocki’s success can very much be linked to this disappointment. It may limp on to the general elections due in 2027, but PiS will feel confident of seizing full power again sooner rather than later.
After a few elections, notably in Australia, Canada and Romania, where liberal or center-left politicians won after distancing themselves from Trump, the U.S. president now appears to have helped secure “a win” in a key European country.
Trump is likely to prefer working with Nawrocki instead of Tusk who has been busy establishing closer links with Brussels as well as the newly minted German chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Quite where this will leave Poland remains to be seen but Tusk is likely to now be a diminished figure in shaping the debate on issues such as EU enlargement and notably security policy on the continent as Europe’s biggest defense spender per capita.
How Will Nawrocki's Win Affect Regional Politics?
Some fear that Warsaw slowly will drift closer to other countries such as Hungary and Slovakia -- and with the Czech Republic potentially heading in the same direction in a parliamentary election in the autumn -- and their populist politicians who are constantly at odds with the EU in many areas.
He is also unlikely to have much support from Moscow.
Nawrocki was responsible for removing several Red Army monuments in Poland, considered a criminal act by Russia, which put him on its national wanted list in 2024.
In Ukraine, Nawrocki’s win will also be met with some worries beyond military and diplomatic support.
Nawrocki has voiced support in cutting some social contributions for Ukrainians living in Poland and for Polish farmers by noting that their livelihood must be secured before Ukraine, with its sizable agricultural sector, can join the EU.
So while Poland will remain tough on the Kremlin, it will turn more inwards, potentially to the detriment of Kyiv.
