Poland’s president proposes EU reform to stop Brussels “dictating terms” to member states

Nov 25, 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.

Poland’s recently elected president, Karol Nawrocki, has proposed plans to reform the European Union so that it infringes less on national sovereignty, stops “dictating the terms” of member states’ political or judicial systems, and ceases trying to “regulate the entire lives of citizens”.

However, despite calling for change, Nawrocki – who is aligned with Poland’s right-wing opposition – rejected claims by the Polish government that he is seeking “Polexit” from the EU. He insists that he supports continued membership of the bloc.

In a lecture at Charles University in Prague, Nawrocki said the Poles and the Czechs know well from their history the dangers of being treated as “students of European integration” by “more experienced” Western countries, rather than as partners or leaders in such change.

Today, once again, “certain Western partners try to guide us in the one and only right direction”, warned the Polish president.

He argued that the EU which Poland joined 21 years ago – one that would provide economic opportunities and freedom of movement – has turned into one that is trying to “dictate the terms of our political system, our diet, or the upbringing of our children”.

Meanwhile, there are “certain forces at play that aim at creating a more centralised European Union…[that] deprives member states, excluding [the] two largest [Germany and France], of their sovereignty…[by] establishing the superiority of EU institutions over the sovereignty of member states”.

 

Nawrocki said that Poland, and in particular the conservative camp to which he belongs, opposes those trends. He emphasised, however, that this does not make them “an enemy of the EU”.

“Poland – like every member state – has its own vision of the EU and is entitled to it,” he declared. “It has the right to strive for the manifestation and adoption of that vision. This is the nature of democracy.”

The Polish president then outlined his vision of a “Polish programme for the European Union” that would ensure that national member states are “masters of the [EU] treaties and the sovereigns deciding on the shape of European integration”, as they are “the only functioning European democracies”.

Nawrocki called for the principle of unanimity to remain in all areas of EU decision-making where it currently applies. That means, in effect, that a single member state can veto change in those areas.

He also advocated for the EU to maintain the principle that each member state, even the very smallest, has the right to designate a member of the European Commission.

More controversially, Nawrocki called for the introduction of a prohibition on people being appointed to the highest EU positions without the recommendation of their home country’s government.

In 2017, Donald Tusk was reappointed as president of the European Council against the opposition of the Polish government, which was led by the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party. Nawrocki is aligned with PiS and, like them, is an opponent of Tusk, who is now Poland’s prime minister.

Indeed, in his new proposal, Nawrocki called for the complete abolition of the position of president of the European Council, saying that the role should be carried out by the head of the executive branch of government of whichever member state holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

This would ensure that the job is done by “a politician with a democratic mandate and political base, rather than a bureaucrat-official dependent on the support of the EU’s greatest powers”.

Rotating the position every six months would also prevent the “permanent dominance of the EU’s ‘central powers’ and the marginalisation of others”. Likewise, Nawrocki called for the council’s voting system “to eliminate the excessive advantage of large EU countries”.

The Polish president also proposed that the EU’s competences should be limited to “selected non-ideological areas”, such as economic development and preventing demographic collapse.

“This means abandoning excessive ambitions to regulate the entire lives of member states and its citizens and the intention of shaping all aspects of politics, sometimes by bypassing or violating the will of the citizens,” said Nawrocki, who also called for the EU not to seek to “compete with NATO” on security.

“Let me be crystal clear: I am a supporter of Poland in the European Union,” he concluded. “But I believe that issues such as political and justice systems or security are reserved exclusively for the Polish constitution, the Polish president and the Polish government. Just as they should be for every member state.”

When PiS was in office between 2015 and 2023, it regularly clashed with Brussels, in particular over its judicial reforms. The EU accused PiS of threatening the rule of law. Many elements of PiS’s reforms were found by European courts to violate EU law.

PiS argued that the European Commission was overstepping its authority in taking action against Poland, and claimed that it was doing so for political reasons, because it was opposed to right-wing governments that sought to protect national sovereignty.

Poland’s current main ruling party, the centrist, pro-EU Civic Coalition (KO), has regularly accused PiS of pushing Poland towards “Polexit” from the EU, either deliberately or in effect.

Last week, foreign minister Radosław Sikorski levelled the same accusation against Nawrocki, claiming that his recent speech on Polish Independence Day was intended to “prepare the psychological and political groundwork for leaving the EU, for Polexit”.

In response to Nawrocki’s speech in Prague, Sikorski issued a brief comment saying that the government “has not authorised the president to submit proposals for amending the European treaties”.

Likewise, interior minister Marcin Kierwiński stated that, “the president, by putting forward controversial proposals for changes to the principles of the [EU’s] functioning, cannot claim to be speaking on behalf of Poland because it is the government that conducts foreign policy”.


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: Mikołaj Bujak/KPRP

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