Trump Effect? Poland Elects National Conservative as President

Poland’s national conservative leader, Karol Nawrocki, has won the presidency of Poland, according to election results on Monday. In a narrow race, Nawrocki defeated Rafal Trzaskowski of the left-wing Civic Platform Party to become the country’s new head of state. 

The president-elect had been endorsed by President Donald Trump.

In Poland’s parliamentary system, the president has the ability to veto legislation from the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of its Parliament (which in turn can be overturned by a three-fifths majority vote). He also serves as the commander in chief of the nation’s armed forces.

However, he does not set much of the governing agenda for the country. The prime minister is the head of government, who runs Poland’s Cabinet, and is confirmed by a vote of the Sejm, which means he is typically the leader of the preeminent party of Poland’s parliament.

If the past is any indication, Nawrocki may be on a collision course with Poland’s current prime minister, Donald Tusk, who has made greater integration with Europe a cornerstone of his foreign policy. 

“Mr. Nawrocki’s election is yet another sign that Europeans are waking up and rejecting the anti-civilizational efforts of the global Left, especially mass migration. Hopefully, he’ll work closely with other patriotic parties to reverse the decades of decline mainstream parties have overseen across Europe,” Wilson Beaver, a senior policy adviser for defense budgeting at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. 

The Daily Signal also spoke with Nile Gardiner, the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, about what the Polish election means for the U.S.

“So, what the election does, it puts a break on the pro-EU agenda of [Polish Prime Minister] Donald Tusk,” Gardiner said.

Nawrocki, who ran for president as an independent, was nevertheless endorsed by the right-wing Law and Justice Party of Poland, which stands in opposition to the current Polish prime minister. 

“The Polish people really want to preserve Poland’s culture, its traditions, and Polish sovereignty,” Gardiner said. 

He noted that Poland is a major military ally to the U.S. and a rising power in Europe. 

“Poland is already moving toward spending close to 5% of GDP on defense, which is above any other country in the NATO alliance right now. And so what happened in Poland really matters for the United States,” Gardiner told The Daily Signal. 

Anthony Kim, the Jay Kingham research fellow in international economic affairs, editor of the Index of Economic Freedom, and manager of global engagement at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom also weighed in.

“As a net security contributor and a valuable partner of Washington in Europe, Warsaw is and will continue to be an important gateway for America’s economic and security engagement with central and eastern European countries,” Kim told the Daily Signal.

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