Tusk flies economy to Brussels for big ticket talks

Polish opposition leader and potential future prime minister Donald Tusk arrived in Brussels on Wednesday (25 October) to discuss the chance to launch the nation’s recovery money, frozen due to the rule of law concerns in Poland. Piotr Maciej Kaczyński and Dariusz Dybka explain the stakes.

Piotr Maciej Kaczyński is an expert with the Bronisław Geremek Foundation in Warsaw and a trainer on EU internal procedures. Dariusz Dybka is a senior climate adviser and partner at Von Kietz consultancy in Brussels.

Donald Tusk is about to return to power in Warsaw. This comeback feels like a déjà vu. The new element of the old-new prime minister is that Donald Tusk of 2023 has now the experience the rookie Tusk of 2007 did not possess.

Now he returns as an embattled veteran and at the European Council will be greeted with applause like Mario Draghi, as a man who effectively defeated the illiberal democrats. From the re-start as Polish premier, he will be among the EU’s top political decision-makers, alongside von der Leyen, Macron and Scholz.

The win

The opposition win in Poland is largely credited to the exceptionally high turnout of 74%, with the new voters mostly being women and the youth.

Politically, the victory of Tusk and his future coalition partners feels like a combination of two strategies seen elsewhere. Joe Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s win over Jair Bolsonaro come to mind: senior leaders returned from retirement to remove far-right leaders from office.

Yet, Poland’s was a parliamentary, not presidential, election. In dealing with the uphill challenge of winning an unfair election there are usually two strategies, tested in Poland and other countries in a similar situation: Czechia, Hungary, and Turkey.

The first is the idea to go in one unified block, but blocks of that kind lost in recent elections in Hungary and Turkey.

The second is to present a variety of democratic choices to the electorate. Czech populist leader Andrej Babis won the vote in 2021 but lost the power to a new coalition led by Petr Fiala, similar to what is happening in Poland now.

This clearly is also the European answer going towards the 2024 elections: the plurality of democratic forces is stronger against the far-right threat.

Tusk’s Europe

The next Warsaw government will not be, nor should it be, submissive to the Commission. Yet, it also cannot be flashy or bully, like the outgoing Law and Justice (PiS) was. Quite to the contrary, the expectations of Warsaw are massive and mounting.

From the assistance to Ukraine in its fight against Russian invasion, to the migration crisis in the Mediterranean and the rapid engagement in climate and energy transition. Nothing is possible without a full restoration of the rule of law.

Only then the recovery and cohesion funds will start to flow to Poland, again.

Almost as an afterthought, the Weimar Triangle (Poland-France-Germany) resurrects and the Visegrad Group remains dysfunctional.

The recent elections in Slovakia, where the populist Robert Fico won, may result in Budapest replacing Warsaw with Bratislava in its own policy against the application of Article 7 (suspension of EU member state rights).

The new government in Warsaw is at least expected to terminate the same procedure against Poland, which was launched by the Commission in 2017.

The New Weimar Triangle (Tusk-Scholz-Macron) has a chance to become the political engine of European integration. The conversion of positions of Warsaw, Paris and Berlin in the context of EU enlargement to Ukraine (after the war), the Western Balkans and Moldova is crucial.

The third campus of the College of Europe has just opened in Tirana, which is indicative as Central European accession to the EU (2004) was pre-empted by the creation of the College’s second campus in Natolin (Warsaw neighbourhood), in the early 1990s.

Challenges

It will not all be smooth. PiS remains in power in many important places in Poland, including the country’s president, the central bank and the top constitutional court.

One of the first political battles will be about the restitution of independent state television.

Another imminent fight is about the annual budget – PiS leaves behind an enormous draft deficit of about 20%. There is still high inflation, a shortage of workforce, and high polarisation in the society. Many groups are demanding social protection while minorities and women groups – protection of their rights.

The path forward leads with the unblocking of the recovery and other EU funds for Poland. This should enable speeding of the transition towards CO2 neutrality by 2050. Here, the credibility of Tusk is on the line. After all, it was Tusk’s government that famously vetoed the EU’s long-term climate policy back in 2011.

Thus, Poland delayed the EU’s climate ambitions by a decade. Only in 2019 with the Green Deal, did the EU return to its original plans for climate neutrality.

The outgoing PiS government of Mateusz Morawiecki negotiated a dissenting opinion in the European Council’s political conclusions. After three years of difficult legislative negotiations, the Fit for 55 package was finally adopted, and the Polish government still formally challenges the Fit for 55 in the Court of Justice.

The new Tusk government will address topics such as cutting emissions by 2040 in industry, agriculture and transport, as well as the regenerative economy, including afforestation and waste management.

The next Warsaw government must constructively – and not like the governments of Tusk 2007-14 (effective veto) or Morawiecki 2016-23 (ineffective bullying) – engage in the creation of new standards for the entire EU and, likely, the world.

Many leaders in the European Council will look to Tusk to hear him on topics important for the Union, such as conditions for future enlargement and possible removal of the national veto in foreign policy.

The migration, geopolitics and security questions – all topics the European Council usually addresses – will actually benefit from the experience of this aged leader.

The first meeting of the new Weimar Triangle leaders of Tusk, Macron and Scholz should be attended by the Commission president von der Leyen. Three powerful, strong and important European countries together shall lead the debate about the future of European integration, including the reform of EU treaties.

“European integration is like riding a bicycle: You have to keep peddling forward to maintain your balance and control the direction,” Polish Europeanist and former foreign minister and MEP Bronisław Geremek used to say.

Jerzy Buzek repeated the words when he took over as president of the European Parliament in 2009.

To use the metaphor of a bicycle, today we can conclude that Europe has finally regained its political balance and is ready to face the challenges of the second half of the 2020s.