Elections In Poland. EU Unity Under Threat

The countdown begins legislative elections in Poland, where on Sunday, October 15, everyone eligible to vote will be called to the polls to elect 460 members of parliament (Sejm in Polish) and 100 senators. The election campaign, which the European newspaper Politico called “apocalyptic,” has become the focus of Western attention following the victory of pro-Russian candidate Robert Fico in the Slovak legislative elections. Fico’s first decision as prime minister, supported by Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, was to suspend aid to Ukraine.

Poland is much more important than Slovakia. It is a key country for the economic, political, and geopolitical balance of not only Eastern Europe, but the entire European Union. Even regarding the role of Poland in the Ukrainian-Russian armed conflict, Poland’s role is fundamental: 99% of the total flow of weapons and military equipment to Ukraine passes through the territory of Poland.

Relations between Warsaw and Brussels are at the center of this election campaign also because at stake is 36 billion in funds from Poland’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which the EU has now frozen for “violating the rule of law.”

Outgoing Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, leader of the far-right national conservative Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – PiS) party that is currently in government and controls 226 seats in parliament, is seeking his third consecutive mandate. For Poland, this would be a record for political “longevity”. In Europe, the PiS party is known as the “iron ally” of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Over the past three months, Morawiecki’s party has tried to push through a highly restrictive law on “sex education in schools” and threatened to cut military aid to Ukraine. Moreover, the Polish nationalist government targeted Germany, a NATO ally and Poland’s main trading partner.

Law and Justice exploited the widespread antipathy among older Poles towards Germany that occupied Poland in 1939. Morawiecki accused Germany of “trying to impose on the Polish government the decisions on many key issues, ranging from immigration management to Russian gas imports.”

In reality, Russia also found itself under Polish attack from all sides with the now traditional accusations of “interfering in the Polish elections.”

Challenging Morawiecki’s nationalist party is Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and former European Council president who leads Poland’s second-largest political force, a center-right liberal coalition called the Civic Coalition (Koalicja Obywatelska – KO). According to the results of a recent public opinion poll conducted by the sociological agency Kantar on October 5, the PiS party could gain 34%, and Tusk’s KO could expect 30% of Polish votes.

The central themes of Tusk’s election campaign were the creation of a modern healthcare system in Poland, the defense of free competition and the free market. Tusk has repeatedly promised to increase government spending on health care and social assistance for people with disabilities. At the same time, Tusk would like to increase taxation on Polish businesses. Finally, at the level of social debate, Tusk spoke out in favor of banning euthanasia, which is not surprising for a Catholic country.