How will Donald Trump’s election victory affect Polish politics?

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

By Aleks Szczerbiak

While Trump’s victory allows Poland’s right-wing opposition to argue that it is the best guarantor of relations with the USA, it could backfire if he brings about a Ukrainian peace settlement favourable to Russia.

But apart from providing the opposition with a strong psychological boost, and causing embarrassment for liberal-centrist ruling party leaders who have heavily criticised him, a Trump presidency is unlikely to be a game-changer in Polish politics.

A boost for Law and Justice

Donald Trump’s victory in last month’s US presidential election has reverberated around the Polish political scene, not surprisingly given that Washington is Poland’s most important military security ally. Many commentators and politicians tried to transpose the result on to the current political situation in Poland, and argued that it could have significant consequences for its key players.

In particular, Trump’s victory provided a strong psychological boost for the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) grouping, Poland’s ruling party for eight years until it was ousted from government following the October 2023 parliamentary election, and currently the main opposition.

The injection of optimism into a previously deflated party was tangible. For many Law and Justice supporters Trump’s triumph reinforced a belief that it was also possible for the party to return to power.

Law and Justice deputies applauded and chanted Trump’s name at the start of the parliamentary session following his victory and some were even pictured wearing baseball caps with his “Make America Great Again” slogan.

Trump’s victory also greatly increased the political stock of Law and Justice-aligned President Andrzej Duda, who has long been a close ally of the president-elect. It boosted Duda’s chances of securing a senior international job when his presidential term ends next summer; one right-wing politician even suggested that he should be appointed Polish ambassador to Washington!

During Trump’s first term, which overlapped with Law and Justice’s rule in Warsaw, the two saw themselves as ideological allies and forged a very close working relationship.

Law and Justice argued that Trump’s political success showed that their critique of what they argued were out-of-touch and complacent liberal-left ruling elites disconnected from ordinary people’s concerns was not simply an anomalous and isolated local Polish phenomenon.

They have portrayed his repeated victory as evidence of a broader anti-establishment backlash from traditionalist conservatives who unashamedly put what they saw as the national interest first, against the globalist cosmopolitan elites that have dominated Western politics in recent years.

Poland’s own crucial presidential election

Next summer Poland is scheduled to hold its own presidential election whose outcome will be crucial for the country’s political future.

Last December, a more liberal coalition government led by Donald Tusk, who had served as Polish prime minister between 2007-14 and then European Council President from 2014-19, was sworn in ending Law and Justice’s period of rule. Tusk is leader of the liberal-centrist Civic Platform (PO) which once again became the country’s main governing party.

However, the government has to “cohabit” with Duda and lacks the three-fifths parliamentary majority required to overturn his legislative veto. This has acted as a major obstacle to the government’s efforts to unravel its predecessor’s legacy and implement deep institutional reforms.

In some cases, it has also hindered the new administration’s attempts to replace Law and Justice’s state office nominees where this requires legislation or presidential sign-off (although it has used various legal loopholes to try and get around this.).

The victory of a government-aligned candidate in the presidential race will remove a major obstacle to the Tusk administration’s institutional reform and elite replacement project and allow it to finally undo the remainder of its predecessor’s legacy.

If, on the other hand, a right-wing opposition-backed candidate wins, the government can expect continued resistance from the presidential palace for the remainder of its parliamentary term. It could also pave the way for Law and Justice to win back power at the next parliamentary election scheduled for autumn 2027.

Law and Justice is obviously hoping that Trump’s victory will translate into their own in next summer’s election.

The party’s excellent links with the president-elect enable it to counter the governing coalition’s argument that under Law and Justice Poland became isolated within the Western international community because of its difficult relations with the EU political establishment, by pointing out that it now has strong ties with Warsaw’s most important military ally.

In the forthcoming presidential election, Law and Justice will no doubt argue that, regardless of what voters may think about the party, it is in Poland’s national security interests to choose its candidate, historian Karol Nawrocki, as the best guarantor of good relations with the USA, rather than risk alienating Trump by voting for someone aligned with the current government (Duda cannot stand again because he is term-limited).

No chemistry, but strategic cooperation is deeply rooted

For sure, there is little chance that there will be any strong diplomatic chemistry between the incoming US administration and the Tusk government, whose reaction to Trump’s victory was distinctly muted. Not only do the Polish governing parties lack the same ideological kinship with Trump as Law and Justice has, in the past they also have been extremely critical of him.

For example, when he served as European Council president, Tusk had a very uneasy relationship with Trump, exemplified by a social media image from a G7 summit that showed him pointing his fingers in the shape of a pistol at his back.

At a recent press conference, Tusk denied a suggestion from a journalist that he had once accused Trump of having ties with the Russian security services, although a video from a speech that he made last year, when he was still opposition leader, revealed that this was true.

Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski once described the president-elect as a “proto-fascist”, although he has since tried to recover ground by arguing that he maintains contacts with both sides of the US political divide, including the Trump camp.

Sikorski’s wife, American journalist and writer Anne Applebaum, even compared Trump’s rhetoric to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini; although the governing camp argue that her personal views should not affect Poland’s relations with the new US administration.

The government also continues to insist that the next Polish ambassador to Washington should be Bogdan Klich (whose appointment Duda is blocking), a Civic Platform politician who has in the past described Trump as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s puppet.

Ahead of the election, the head of the Law and Justice parliamentary caucus Mariusz Błaszczak even declared that the Tusk administration should resign if Trump won, given that it had backed his Democrat opponent Kamala Harris. The government rejected Błaszczak’s claim that it favoured Harris and sought to downplay the importance of all of these earlier hostile comments by government-linked figures.

It is clearly hoping that, for all their political differences, the new US administration will put contentious issues that could undermine broader strategic cooperation on the back-burner. Indeed, despite the Polish government and incoming US president having opposing ideological motivations, Warsaw and Washington have ongoing common geopolitical interests and there is still plenty of scope for the two countries to work together closely.

Polish-US strategic cooperation is deeply rooted, and Trump has frequently referred to Poland as an example of a loyal ally, not least because Warsaw is substantially increasing its already-high levels of defence expenditure, so there is unlikely to be a collapse in bilateral relations when the new American administration takes office.

Nonetheless, although Poland will obviously not be high on the list of the Trump administration’s priorities, it is bound to be aware of the kind of narrative that the Tusk government has engaged in.

Vice-president-elect JD Vance, for example, once called upon the Tusk administration to tame its alleged authoritarian tendencies and stop arresting its political opponents.

Interestingly, Civic Platform presidential candidate and Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski was much more cautious in commenting on US politics and does not have a record of publicly attacking Trump. So when a delegation of the president-elect’s representatives visited Poland after the election they met with Trzaskowski (and Duda) but not Tusk nor Sikorski.

An unpredictable ally?

Given his transactional approach to politics and foreign relations, some commentators have raised concerns about Trump’s potential unpredictability on international issues, particularly whether his administration would be less willing than its predecessors to engage in European security.

Poland’s geographical location means that it feels particularly vulnerable to Russia’s imperial ambitions and all Polish parties are very keen that Trump should not scale down the US military commitment to NATO’s eastern flank.

In fact, as well trying to present a more conciliatory tone towards and develop a working relationship with the incoming US administration, the Tusk government has also argued that Trump’s election victory confirms that Europe needs to take more responsibility for its own security and increase defence capability in case the next American president should make unpredictable foreign policy moves.

Indeed, Tusk has tried to present Poland as well placed to play a leadership role here, given its pivotal importance in deterring Russian expansion into wider Europe and the fact that recent domestic political developments have left France and Germany in a much weaker position internationally.

For its part, although it supports increased defence spending by all NATO members, Law and Justice argues that the idea that Europe can ensure its own security without the USA is a pipe dream.

However, critics argue that Law and Justice is allowing cultural-ideological similarities with Trump to overshadow the fact that he is a potentially unpredictable partner on the international stage. There is a risk, they argue, that Law and Justice’s enthusiasm for Trump could backfire on the party if he is perceived to act in a way that undermines Polish national security.

For example, if Trump brings about a peace settlement in Ukraine over the heads of Poland and other NATO post-communist states, and on terms that could be portrayed as favourable and might embolden Putin’s Russia, this could be politically costly for Law and Justice and its presidential candidate.

More continuity than change?

In fact, many of Trump’s proposals are not new and in his first term he largely continued his predecessors’ European policies, even strengthening the US presence on key fronts.

Although he has appeared to question Washington’s continued commitment to transatlantic mutual defence, implying that the USA would only protect NATO allies who were prepared to pay at least 2% of their GDP on military spending as required under the alliance’s rules, successive US administrations have pressured European countries to increase defence expenditure and contribute more to collective defence, as Poland already has.

In other aspects of European security, Poland could generally count on the Trump administration’s goodwill on issues of greatest importance to it. He not only continued the previous Obama administration’s security policy on NATO’s eastern flank but actually strengthened the US military presence in Poland.

Under Trump, the USA sustained and deepened opposition to the Nord-Stream 2 pipeline project to transfer Russian gas to Germany bypassing Poland via the Baltic Sea, including threatening sanctions against companies involved in its construction (a policy that the Biden administration at one point reversed), and started delivering liquefied natural gas to help secure Polish diversity of energy sources.

Trump also gave strong support to projects such as the “Three Seas Initiative”, a Polish-led regional forum to develop solidarity and cooperation between 12 central and eastern European states.

Trump’s election may not, therefore, be the political game-changer that Law and Justice is hoping for, but neither should government supporters assume that the opposition’s close association with the new US president will automatically backfire on them.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

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

Main image credit: Grzegorz Jakubowski/KPRP