Poland will do everything to keep Britain close to the European Union and will be a “poster boy” for the continent when dealing with President Trump, the man tipped to be the country’s next president has pledged.
Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, said that his country could be a “linchpin” between the United States and the EU, especially on defence.
“We need Britain. We need Britain because of its experience, because of the historical link, because of its defence capabilities. And Poland will always remain a friend of Britain and will do everything to keep Britain as close to the European Union as possible,” Trzaskowski, 53, told The Times at a lakeside hotel in Olsztyn, some 50 miles from the Russian border.
Poland votes in the first round of a presidential election on Sunday — and it is Trzaskowski’s to lose.
The president, though the post is largely ceremonial, can obstruct laws and wields significant influence over foreign policy. The incumbent, Andrzej Duda, from the hard-right Law and Justice party, has been a thorn in the side of Donald Tusk, the centrist prime minister.
Trzaskowski, Tusk’s preferred candidate, was adamant that the UK needed to be part of any European defence initiative. The shadow of Russia’s influence lingers in Poland and memories of Soviet dominance still shape Trzaskowski’s generation. He has an early objective for his presidency, he said: to secure Poland a seat at any Ukraine peace talks.
The so-called Normandy format for negotiations, formed of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine and used after the outbreak of war in Donbas in 2014, could not be repeated, he insisted.
“You really think you can do it without Poland? We are a launching pad for helping Ukraine, and we are going to be a launching pad for rebuilding Ukraine and for strengthening the security guarantees,” he said.
“At the end of the day, you know, we are three times more powerful than we were ten years ago,” he asserted, comparing Poland’s military — which has 216,100 personnel — to that of of France (204,700), Germany (185,600) and Britain (138,100). “We are securing the border. We have the biggest army in Europe for the first time in European history.
• Ukrainian refugees ‘collateral’ in Polish presidential election
“If they still think that they can do something without Poland, that’s completely counterproductive, to put it mildly. I think that Europe should be at the table. And I think that at the end of the day, Trump understands this as well.”
Trzaskowski lives with his wife Malgorzata, an economist, and two children in Warsaw. He believes he is in a unique position to understand the American establishment at a turning point for transatlantic relations. At 19, he worked in Washington for both Republican and Democratic members of Congress and has ties to the former New York mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. This bipartisan experience, he said, informed his belief that Poland could be a model ally for Trump’s America.
“Many politicians in Europe react to Donald Trump’s administration with emotions,” he said. “I’m a serious politician. I need to have a plan. I need to have arguments, not emotions. We’re doing exactly what they were saying Europeans should do. We take security responsibly. We are buying a lot of American equipment. We are securing our borders, and we also have an enormous influence within the European Union.
Trzaskowski is married to Malgorzata, an economist
KACPER PEMPEL/REUTERS
“If the new American administration has this approach based squarely on interests, you can say ‘We are your poster boy’,” he said. “We are buying American equipment, welcoming American investment in Europe, but at the same time, we want to stay independent and we want to be treated seriously.”
Poland’s defence spending is almost 5 per cent of GDP, far above its European neighbours, a fact that has led to members of the Trump administration praising it as an ideal ally. Trzaskowski said he hoped he would be able to encourage neighbouring countries to follow suit.
At a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Turkey on Thursday, the German minister said that in principle his country accepted America’s demand to increase spending to 5 per cent of GDP.
“We need to take more responsibility ourselves, to prove to the Americans that there is no free-riding in Europe. As simple as that,” Trzaskowski said.
He has also taken a harder line on migration than other European centrists. “In Poland, we do not want to repeat the mistakes of a migration policy which were implemented in Germany or in Sweden,” he said.
Trzaskowski has been painted as an out-of-touch metropolitan during his time as mayor of Warsaw
JAKUB PORZYCKI/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES
His metropolitan image has long been a target for populists hoping to leave him unpalatable to voters in smaller towns and rural regions. Now, at up to three rallies a day, Trzaskowski’s speeches emphasise national pride and tighter migration limits.
He thinks that EU members should be able to decide for themselves which third countries are considered safe, adding that Tusk’s government was planning “big propaganda campaigns in Afghanistan, in Iraq” to discourage crossings into the EU via the Belarus border. Alexander Lukashenko, the country’s dictator, sparked a crisis by flooding migrants over the border in 2021.
• Could Poland and Germany acquire nuclear bombs?
Trzaskowski said that European security was inseparable from Nato and that he had no shortage of faith in American defence guarantees. He also said he would seek to host additional allied troops in Poland as president.
“We need to strengthen Nato, and whatever we do within the European Union has to be conceived as a strengthening of a European pillar of Nato,” he said.
“It’s absolutely crucial for Poland to have America in Europe, the Europeans as ready as possible and as capable as possible, because only that would actually give us full, ironclad guarantees and only then we could actually grab the Russians by their throat.”