Nawrocki, 42, is a historian backed by the hardline conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party. He is also an amateur boxer and avowed former football hooligan, and has never held elected office. <\/p>\n
His campaign, steeped in Catholic nationalism and anti-EU rhetoric, promised to halt Tusk\u2019s reform agenda and \u201crestore sovereignty\u201d from the perceived overreach of Berlin and Brussels. Tusk, Nawrocki said, has \u201ca monopoly of evil power.\u201d<\/p>\n
His triumph, over the pro-European liberal Rafa\u0142 Trzaskowski, promises institutional paralysis. Under Poland\u2019s constitution, the president can veto legislation, which can only be overridden with a three-fifths majority in the parliament, the Sejm. Tusk\u2019s coalition, which came into office after the 2023 parliamentary elections, falls well short of that threshold.<\/p>\n
![\"Karol](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/SEI_253983783.jpg\")
Nawrocki, his wife Marta and family greet supporters as exit polls were announced on tv (Photo: Wojtek Radwanski\/AFP)<\/p>\n
On Monday evening, Tusk vowed to call a confidence vote following Nawrocki\u2019s victory, and insisted that the presidential elections \u201chave not changed and will change nothing\u201d. <\/p>\n
Given the parliamentary arithmetic, Tusk is likely to survive. But for a government already struggling to deliver on campaign promises \u2013 including restoring judicial independence, liberalising abortion laws, and shifting toward green energy \u2013 Nawrocki\u2019s win all but guarantees gridlock. <\/p>\n
Since taking office in 2023, Tusk has attempted to undo PiS\u2019s packing of courts and independent institutions with its cronies, but he has been stymied by the outgoing president, Andrzej Duda, who is also backed by PiS.<\/p>\n
Nawrocki is expected to be even more combative. \u201cI expect President Nawrocki to be even less cooperative than Duda,\u201d said Jakub Jaraczewski, a research Coordinator at Democracy Reporting International. <\/p>\n
\u201cA comprehensive restoration of judicial independence is now vanishing from the table. Tough times ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many see Nawrocki\u2019s rise as the PiS party\u2019s renewal in a more extreme form, echoing the style of Donald Trump\u2019s second term. Indeed, last week, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem flew to Poland to endorse Nawrocki, calling him a \u201cstrong\u201d leader like Trump.<\/p>\n
It comes despite a series of elections \u2013 in Canada, Australia and Romania \u2013 in which the hard-right populist candidates saw their prospect damaged by their proximity to the US president. <\/p>\n
This time, the Trump effect may have been marginal. Nor did Nawrocki appear to have been affected by a series of scandals: ties with criminals (which he describes as \u201cstrictly professional\u201d in his role as a historian); revelations that he once dressed up as someone else to promote his own book (to which he retorted that \u201cliterary pseudonyms are nothing new in Polish academia\u201d); and allegedly procuring sex workers for guests at a hotel where he worked (he denies the claims). <\/p>\n
The main reason for his victory seems disaffection with Tusk\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
![\"WARSAW,](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/SEI_253983593.jpg\")
Trzaskowski appeared positive earlier in the evening \u2013 but his pro-Brussels platform was narrowly rejected (Photo Omar Marques\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Like Trump, Nawrocki believes in absolute sovereignty, and is loathe to accept any instruction from supranational authorities \u2013 and part of his appeal appears to be his Trumpian rants against supposedly meddling outsiders. <\/p>\n
The election will cripple Tusk\u2019s efforts to bring Poland back into the European mainstream after a decade of drift. Billions in EU recovery and cohesion funds \u2013 released on the condition of judicial reform \u2013 now hang in the balance. <\/p>\n
If those changes are vetoed, as Nawrocki has pledged, Brussels may once again freeze Poland\u2019s funding.<\/p>\n
This political stalemate could also catalyse a broader crisis. With Nawrocki emboldened, opposition MPs are expected to target the weakest links in Tusk\u2019s diverse coalition \u2013 a blend of liberals, conservatives, and agrarians \u2013 as potential defectors. Should the coalition splinter, early elections could ensue. <\/p>\n
![\"Civic](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/SEI_253981859.jpg\")
Tusk now faces an uphill battle, as anti-EU forces are emboldened (Photo: Kacper Pempel\/Reuters)<\/p>\n
And with Tusk\u2019s government already losing popularity over its failure to deliver reforms, polls suggest PiS could return to power \u2013 potentially in alliance with the far-right Confederation party, which is ascendant among younger voters.<\/p>\n
Beyond domestic deadlock, Nawrocki\u2019s win signals a shift in Poland\u2019s international posture. His rhetoric \u2013 warning against Poland becoming a \u201cprovince of a federalising EU\u201d \u2013 has drawn praise from fellow nationalists like Hungary\u2019s Viktor Orb\u00e1n and France\u2019s Marine Le Pen. <\/p>\n
He opposes the EU Green Deal, criticises migration policy, and flirts with abandoning Poland\u2019s longstanding pro-Ukraine stance by rejecting Kyiv\u2019s NATO membership. Poland\u2019s post-2023 renaissance as a reliable EU pillar and NATO ally now looks at risk.<\/p>\n
Markets have noticed. The Polish stock market dipped following Nawrocki\u2019s victory. The zloty weakened. Investors, who had returned with enthusiasm after Tusk\u2019s 2023 win, are again uneasy. <\/p>\n
Nawrocki\u2019s win promises a weakened, paralysed government, a chill in EU-Polish relations, a boost for far-right populism in Europe; and a battered reputation for a country that, only two years ago, looked poised to lead the EU\u2019s eastern renewal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nawrocki win bucks international trend of hard-right populists losing after aligning with Trump It was a razor-thin win,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[32,5898,2000,299,5187,770],"class_list":{"0":"post-154023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-donald-tusk","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-poland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114617840057324145","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}