Nationalist opposition candidate Karol Nawrocki narrowly won Poland’s presidential election, results showed yesterday, delivering a big blow to the centrist government’s efforts to cement Warsaw’s pro-European orientation.
In a victory for European conservatives inspired by US President Donald Trump, Nawrocki secured 50.89 per cent of the vote, election commission data showed. The outcome presages more political gridlock as he is likely to use his presidential veto to thwart Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s liberal policy agenda.
Tusk’s government has been seeking to reverse judicial reforms made by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government that lost power 18 months ago but President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, has blocked those efforts. Nawrocki is likely to continue that pattern as president.
The judicial reforms helped sour relations with Brussels under the PiS government. The European Union’s top court ruled that a new procedure for appointing judges did not guarantee their impartiality, opening the way for rulings to be questioned, and Brussels sued Poland after its Constitutional Tribunal questioned the primacy of EU law.
Nawrocki’s rival, Rafal Trzaskowski, Tusk’s ruling Civic Coalition (KO) candidate, had declared victory immediately after the publication of an exit poll late on Sunday that showed the result would be very close.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t manage to convince the majority of citizens of my vision of Poland,” Trzaskowski said on X. “I congratulate Karol Nawrocki on winning the presidential election.”
Nawrocki, a conservative historian and amateur boxer who was backed by PiS, had presented the vote as a referendum on Tusk’s 18-month-old government.
Tusk did not immediately comment on the election outcome.
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