American conservative CPAC conference to be held in Poland for first time

Mar 24, 2025 | 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.

CPAC, a major conference organised by the American Conservative Union (ACU), will be held in Poland this year for the first time, ACU’s president, Matt Schlapp, has announced during a visit to the country.

“We just announced CPAC in Poland later this year,” wrote Schlapp, who was in Poland to collect an award from conservative broadcaster Republika, in a post on X. “St. John Paul help guide our steps,” he added, referring to former Polish Pope John Paul II.

CPAC has been held annually in the United States since 1974 and is attended by leading conservative activists. The keynote address at this year’s event was given by President Donald Trump, who also briefly met with his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, on the sidelines of the conference.

Since 2017, CPAC has also regularly held conferences abroad, including in Japan, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, Australia and Mexico. The only other European country to host CPAC so far has been Hungary, which did so in 2022 and 2024.

“Bringing the most important conservative event in the world to Poland…is incredibly important,” said Tobiasz Bocheński, a politician from Poland’s national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party. “Conservatives from Italy, Sweden and France will envy us.”

Bocheński said that the event will be “an opportunity to make conservatives from all over Europe focus on Poland”. It will allow “us Poles, together with Americans, to forge the opinion of conservatives on European integration, transatlantic ties, and on Putin’s Russia”.

 

Wojciech Kolarski, the head of Duda’s International Policy Office, told news website Niezależna that CPAC’s decision to come to Poland is a “great honour” that shows “we are presented by Washington as an example of a country that best responds to the challenges of the present”.

During Trump’s speech at the CPAC event in Washington last month, he declared that he was “honoured to be joined” by Duda, who was seated in the front row. Trump called him “a fantastic man and a great friend of mine”.

During a visit to Poland in February, Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, hailed Poland as a “model ally”, in particular for its defence spending, which is the highest in NATO in relation to national GDP.

However, although Duda is aligned with PiS, Poland’s current government is a more liberal coalition led by Donald Tusk, who has been openly critical of Trump in the past. PiS is highly critical of Tusk’s government, including accusing it of damaging relations with the US.

Kolarski told Niezależna that holding CPAC in Poland can give the Polish right a “good example….of how you can build an institution in Poland that will have an impact on the Polish political scene”.

“While the Polish version of CPAC can strengthen transatlantic relations and can be a forum for cooperation between right-wing politicians in our region, it can [also] be an undertaking with enormous significance for the future of Polish politics,” he added.

Duda’s current and final term in office ends in August this year, with elections taking place in May and June to choose his successor. The next parliamentary elections, which decide who forms Poland’s government, are scheduled to be held in 2027.

PiS-backed candidate Karol Nawrocki is currently second in the polls for the presidential election, with average support of around 26%. However, the frontrunner is Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate of Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO), who is on 36%.

CPAC has faced accusations in recent years of giving voice to individuals with extreme views. Foreign Policy magazine wrote last year that the event “gives stage to international far-right extremists”.

At this year’s CPAC in Washington, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon was accused of making a fascist-style salute after his speech. He insisted it was just a “wave”.

Last year, CPAC’s event in Hungary featured among the speakers Jack Posobiec, an American alt-right figure who has spread conspiracy theories and other falsehoods, and has been accused of promoting white supremacist and Russian disinformation.

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.

Main image credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr (under CC BY-SA 2.0)

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