Not everything is going as planned for Donald Tusk. Reform efforts have stalled, and the resistance remains strong. Will concerns of increased Russian influence motivate pro-government voters in this week’s EU elections?
After six months in office, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his center-left coalition administration have implemented only a fraction of the measures promised to Poland’s liberal and pro-European electorate.
With only a few days until the EU elections, the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, led by Tusk’s archrival Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has overcome a terrible start to its campaign and is once again leading in surveys.
Tusk used a tried-and-true tactic to motivate his supporters for Sunday’s election: he organized a rally in Warsaw on Tuesday.
Tusk rallies supporters in Warsaw:
June 4 was a highly historic occasion in Poland since it commemorated the 35th anniversary of the country’s first largely free EU elections, which preceded the fall of the communist system in 1989.
Tusk pointed to this momentous occasion on Tuesday, telling a crowd of roughly 30,000 people gathered in Warsaw’s Castle Square, “The history of 1989 was the expulsion of the Soviet system from our country.” “Today, we are here to ensure that this system does not return,” he stated.
He warned about the perils of pro-Russian victories in the EU elections. “Believe me, for the Kremlin, the political conquest of Brussels would be more important than the capture of Kharkiv,” he stated. He continued: “We must not fall asleep, we cannot rest on our laurels.”
Fear of Russian influence is increasing:
For weeks, Tusk has framed the election as a conflict between Europe and Russia.
He accuses Poland’s national-conservative opposition, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, of forming an alliance with the euroskeptic parties of Viktor Orban in Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France. Tusk claimed that these parties want to destabilize the European Union, which would play perfectly into the hands of the Kremlin, and described PiS politicians in parliament as “paid traitors and Moscow’s lackeys.”
Fear of hostile Russian activity does not arise out of nowhere; it is a reaction to a series of recent events.
Poland’s security forces believe Russia is behind many arson attacks in Warsaw and throughout the country.
Cyberattacks have also increased recently. The police believe the Polish Press Agency (PAP) was the most recent target of such an attempt.
Increased tensions on the Polish-Belarusian border:
The situation at the Polish-Belarusian border, which is part of the EU’s eastern borders, has also worsened in recent weeks. Despite the hurdles erected by the previous government, over 300 incidents involving Polish security forces and migrants are reported each day. These migrants are attempting to breach the border and enter the EU.
There have been allegations of migrants throwing stones and logs at Polish border officers and attacking them with sharp weapons. A week earlier, a soldier was critically hurt when he was stabbed in the ribs while attempting to stop a migrant.
At the rally in Warsaw, Tusk accused Moscow and Minsk of using “organized pressure” to destabilize the situation at the border. “It’s war there — every day, every hour — steered by Lukashenko und Putin,” he told the crowd.
PiS stays strong despite corruption allegations:
The liberal camp’s hope that PiS would lose power over state media after being thrown out of office has not come true. Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has weathered internal criticism of his leadership style and is currently the unquestioned leader of the national-conservative movement.
Numerous controversies involving PiS that surfaced following the turnover of power do not appear to have impacted support for the party among PiS supporters either.
Three parliamentary committees have been established and are operating at full capacity. However, while parliamentarians on these committees become bogged down in details, the PiS politicians summoned to testify before them demonstrate their ability to defend themselves and disrupt the committees’ work. There have been no concrete achievements thus far, and Tusk’s fans are growing antsy.
Most Poles are pro-EU:
Support for the EU remains particularly high in Poland. The latest survey conducted by the Pew Research Center says that 76% of Poles are in favor of European integration, while 21% are critical of the EU. However, years of anti-European rhetoric from PiS — in particular against the EU’s Green Deal and migration policy — have left their mark: Two years ago, support for the EU was as high as 89%.
This Sunday, Polish voters will go to the polls for the third time in just eight months. It is not clear how voter fatigue will affect turnout, which is unlikely to be as high as it was for the parliamentary election last October, when almost 75% of those eligible to vote did so, with some standing in line until late in the night to cast their vote. Turnout for previous European elections in Poland has been somewhere between 20% and 24%. In 2019, however, it jumped to almost 46%.
“Voter turnout will be decisive,” wrote Michal Schuldrzynski in the Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita on Wednesday. This, he explained, was why Tusk was focusing so heavily on anti-Russian sentiment. According to Schuldrzynski, fear of the PiS and Russia are the only tools Tusk has to mobilize voters.
