Why does Poland’s European Parliament election matter?

The liberal-centrist ruling party is desperate to establish itself as Poland’s leading political force after failing to knock the right-wing opposition off the top spot in April’s local elections.

It is trying to polarise the European Parliament election around claims that the opposition is serving Russian interests, partly to distract voters from issues such as the Green Deal where it has avoided adopting its preferred pro-EU stance.

Poland’s electoral marathon

On 9 June, Poles will vote in the European Parliament (EP) election, the latest installment in the country’s electoral marathon that began with last October’s parliamentary poll, continued through April’s local elections and will culminate in next summer’s crucial presidential poll.

Last December, a new coalition government led by Donald Tusk, who had served as Polish prime minister between 2007-2014 and then European Council President from 2014-2019, was sworn in, ending the eight-year rule of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party. Tusk is leader of the liberal-centrist Civic Platform (PO) which once again became the country’s main governing party.

The new coalition also includes the eclectic Third Way (Trzecia Droga) alliance – which comprises the agrarian-centrist Polish People’s Party (PSL), and the liberal-centrist Poland 2050 (Polska 2050) grouping formed to capitalise on TV personality-turned-politician Szymon Hołownia’s strong third place in the 2020 presidential election – and the smaller New Left (Nowa Lewica) party, the main component of a broader Left (Lewica) electoral alliance.

The European poll is a so-called “second order” election and when these are held shortly after a parliamentary poll one would expect newly elected governing parties to do well because they are still enjoying a post-election honeymoon while the losing parties’ de-moralised supporters are much less likely to vote.

In fact, although the governing camp had hoped to use the April local elections to weaken an already-battered PiS, the right-wing opposition party defied predictions and secured the largest share of the vote in the regional assembly polls, the key barometer of national support.

However, the fact that PiS did so surprisingly well in the local elections has shifted the balance of expectations putting it under pressure to repeat its success in the June poll.

Moreover, European elections have often been very difficult ones for PiS. While turnout has generally been very low overall (between 2004-2014 it ranged from 21-25%) – which should favour a party with a large, loyal core electorate such as PiS – it has often tended to be higher among better-off, urban voters who support liberal-centrist and left-wing parties.

In fact, in the previous 2019 European election PiS actually secured its best ever election result: 45%. It mobilised its supporters by treating the election as a prelude to the parliamentary poll held later that year, reflected in the 46% turnout.

However, it will be very difficult to repeat this in June because most Poles are tired of politics, so the European election is much more likely to play out as a classic “second order” poll with turnout closer to the 20-30% mark.

PO focuses on Russian influence

The conclusion that PO drew from the local elections was that it performed worse because of low turnout among its core supporters and, knowing that this could fall dramatically in the European election, the party needed to concentrate on mobilising its electoral base. As a consequence, PO has adopted a much more combative approach and tried to polarise the election around a clear and simple message that taps into voters’ emotions and fears.

To achieve this goal, as its main campaign theme PO has focused on the need to protect Polish national security against the aggressive actions of the Russian and Belarusian security services. It has tried to present PiS as a party that only pretends to be anti-Russian but has in practice operated in accordance with Moscow’s interests for many years.

Pitching the election as a straight choice between East and West, PO has stressed the importance of EU self-defence and the threat that PiS is said to represent to this. It argues that PiS has developed dangerous links with other European, Kremlin-sympathetic right-wing parties that undermine the EU and therefore the whole of the continent’s security architecture.

It has also used the case of Tomasz Szmydt, a Polish judge who in May defected to Belarus, as a pretext to re-activate the so-called “Russian influence” commission. This body was originally established by PiS in the run-up to last year’s parliamentary election, when PO and the other then-opposition parties boycotted it as a crude attempt to discredit Tusk for his alleged pro-Moscow sympathies.

A Polish judge has fled to Belarus, saying he is seeking asylum due to political persecution in Poland.

The judge was previously implicated in a scandal involving an online smear campaign against critics of the former PiS government’s judicial reforms https://t.co/QR3gcYwMLV

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 6, 2024

Its members were dismissed by the incoming parliament, although it was never formally disbanded. Szmydt was appointed in 2018 as director of the legal department of the national judicial council (KRS), a body overseeing the Polish judiciary that was re-structured by PiS, although the opposition denies any connections to him.

PO has also pledged to further strengthen fortifications along the Polish-Belarusian border, arguing that hundreds of attempts at illegal crossings are being recorded every day as part of efforts to destabilise Poland and the region. This has led to charges of hypocrisy from PiS who argue that PO was lukewarm about the border wall when the previous government began its construction.

PiS targets the Green Deal

All of this is marks a significant change of narrative compared to previous PO European election campaigns which stressed themes such as the importance of EU funds for Poland’s development.

PO’s emphasis on countering Russian threats to Polish security was also a good way of avoiding issues upon which PiS had been focusing that strike a popular chord but are difficult for the governing party to adopt the unambiguously pro-EU stance that probably aligns more closely with its real preferences.

These include opposing: EU treaty changes to shift the Union’s decision-making processes away from unanimity towards qualified majority voting; the EU migration pact, which proposes a so-called “solidarity mechanism” requiring member states to accept relocated migrants or pay a sum for each one not accepted; and Polish adoption of the euro single currency.

PiS has also made one of its main policy goals stopping the so-called EU Green Deal, a package of policy initiatives to help the union reduce carbon emissions. The Green Deal, it argues, threatens to raise the cost of living for Poles through higher energy and transport prices and greater costs for businesses and housing construction, as well as ruining agriculture and the traditional Polish lifestyle freedoms, all to serve German interests.

PO and other opposition parties have responded by pointing out that PiS accepted the terms of the Green Deal when it was in office, as did the party-nominated EU agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojchiechowski. PiS, in turn, argues that rejecting the project at the time would have simply marginalised Poland, and that the current terms of the deal were not what they agreed to.

Controversial, high-profile candidates

Both of the two main parties are also hoping to mobilise support by standing well-known high-profile candidates.

The PO list, for example, includes three key former government members: culture minister Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, interior minister Marcin Kierwiński and state assets minister Borys Budka. These are politicians from the very core of the governing party’s power nexus who were responsible for removing PiS appointees and influence from the security services and state-owned companies, including the state-owned media.

The PO candidates list also includes two of the three chairs of the high-profile special parliamentary investigative commissions set up to achieve a “reckoning” (in Polish: rozliczenie) with the previous administration’s alleged abuses of power: Dariusz Joński and Michał Szczerba. All of these candidacies are certainly eye-catching, but resigning from these posts so soon in order to seek well-paid work in Brussels leaves them open to accusations of opportunism.

PiS is also running controversial high profile candidates. These include former interior minister Mariusz Kamiński and his deputy Maciej Wąsik who in December were convicted of abusing their powers while heading up Poland’s anti-corruption agency in the mid-2000s and banned from holding public office, but were later pardoned by party-backed President Andrzej Duda.

PiS insists that Kamiński and Wąsik’s convictions were invalid because Duda had already pardoned them in 2015. The pair do not enjoy widespread support within the party, and even less among the wider electorate, but PiS feels obliged to support them as political martyrs.

Poland’s opposition PiS party has named two politicians convicted of abusing their powers as candidates for June’s European elections.

The pair were in December handed jail terms and bans on holding public office but later received presidential pardons https://t.co/ihNA3IFmqq

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 25, 2024

Other controversial PiS candidates include: Jacek Kurski, who is accused of turning Polish state TV into a PiS propaganda tool during his tenure as its president; and Daniel Obajtek, into whom the public prosecutor’s office has launched three ongoing investigations relating to his time as head of the Orlen energy giant (which PiS argues are politically motivated).

Polarisation squeezes the smaller groupings

This intense polarisation should theoretically provide an opening for the Third Way, whose main message seems to be the need for Poland’s political elite to unite in order to protect national security and advance the country’s interests within the EU more effectively.

However, beyond that the grouping lacks a coherent over-arching campaign theme. The PSL has adopted a mildly Eurosceptic tone, especially on issues such as the Green Deal which hits its rural-agricultural base.

Poland 2050, which is allied in the pro-federalist Renew Europe liberal grouping in the European Parliament, on the other hand has come across as much more EU-enthusiastic. It has, for example, called for more rapid Polish adoption of the euro. Low turnout in small towns and rural areas will hit the PSL, while Poland 2050 has one of “softest” and least-motivated electorates.

For its part, the Left has tried to carve out a niche as the most pro-EU integration grouping, coming out in favour of replacing national vetoes with qualified majority voting in more policy areas. However, its candidates list is not particularly inspiring, and in a polarised election remains vulnerable to being squeezed by PO as the most popular anti-PiS grouping.

As radical parties generally perform better in “second order” elections, particularly European polls where “entry costs” are fairly low, the June poll should provide a good opportunity for the radical right Confederation (Konfederacja) grouping.

It has a clear and unambiguous radical Eurosceptic programme, and without a government record to defend can outflank PiS on issues like the Green Deal. However, the polarised nature of the campaign has also made it very difficult for Confederation to cut through with its distinctive message.

Will PO’s Russian influence gambit work?

Given the likely extremely low turnout, the two main parties’ European election campaigns appear to be aimed almost exclusively at mobilising their core electorates. PiS is fighting to finish ahead of PO in a tenth consecutive Polish election, while Tusk’s party is desperate to finally end this run and establish itself as Poland’s dominant political force. Even the most minimal of victories over PiS will be claimed as a renewed mandate.

The big question for PO is: will voters be mobilised by its tough anti-PiS rhetoric and claims that the opposition party is serving Russian interests, or does Tusk’s government need to offer voters a more positive policy agenda to maintain their support?

At the same time, while PiS has kept itself in the political game, and much of its Eurosceptic rhetoric on issues such as the Green Deal taps into real public concerns, the party is still grappling with a series of unresolved internal crises and conflicts and lacks a clear strategy for how to broaden its appeal.

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Main image credit: Kancelaria Prezesa Rady Ministrów (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Aleks Szczerbiak is Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex. The original version of this article appeared here.