Thursday

28th Mar 2024

Poland's ruling party back in the lead after Ukraine crisis

  • Donald Tusk (l) pictured with EU council chief Van Rompuy - the Polish PM has been meeting other EU leaders over the Ukraine crisis (Photo: consilium.europa.eu)

The Ukrainian crisis has been a gamechanger in Poland's European election campaign – Donald Tusk's PO was set to lose; it is now back in the lead.

Twenty-seven percent of Poles say they would vote for the centre-right Civic Platform (PO) and 26 percent for Law and Justice (PiS), according to the latest poll by TNS Polska, published on Sunday (6 April).

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

This is a significant change. For more than a year, the right-wing opposition party led by former prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski was 5-7 percentage points ahead of the ruling party.

Until this spring, voters were turning away from Donald Tusk's party due to growing dissatisfaction with his government, which has been in power for over six years.

Last year was not a good year for the Polish economy and unemployment increased to more than 14 percent.

However, the Ukrainian crisis and the government's strong response has changed the trend in the polls. In Poland, the PO succeeded in moving the campaign from domestic issues to foreign policy, where it feels stronger.

As tensions rose in February, Donald Tusk toured Europe and met 11 leaders of EU member states. The Polish foreign minister, together with his German and French counterparts, played a key role in resolving the crisis in Kiev.

Tusk was also very active at the European summit, when EU leaders were deciding on Europe's response to Russia's annexation of Crimea.

"This won't be elections about the banking union or who gets more money in the EU," Tusk said at the party convention on 22 April. "It is about the core of our European history; we will decide whether Europe will survive." One of the guests at the convention was Ukrainian boxer and political leader Vitali Klitschko.

PiS is trying to steer the campaign back to domestic politics, but without success.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski wanted to hold a debate with Tusk and experts on the health service, but the PM turned his offer down.

The opposition accuses Tusk of frightening voters with the threat of war. In one of his speeches, the PM said that we do not know whether "children will go to school this autumn".

"No one went that far in scaring Poles," said Leszek Miller, the leader of the left-wing SLD, which is third in the polls with 10 percent support.

"But Europe's real problems are somewhere else. They are high unemployment, the lack of perspectives for young people, growing poverty and rising euroscepticism," he added.

But while recent polls show that PO is back in the game, it does not mean that the ruling party will definitely win.

The campaign will be hard fought, as the margin in the polls between the main competitors, PiS and PO, is still very small.

Opinion

Why UK-EU defence and security deal may be difficult

Rather than assuming a pro-European Labour government in London will automatically open doors in Brussels, the Labour party needs to consider what it may be able to offer to incentivise EU leaders to factor the UK into their defence thinking.

Latest News

  1. Kenyan traders react angrily to proposed EU clothes ban
  2. Lawyer suing Frontex takes aim at 'antagonistic' judges
  3. Orban's Fidesz faces low-polling jitters ahead of EU election
  4. German bank freezes account of Jewish peace group
  5. EU Modernisation Fund: an open door for fossil gas in Romania
  6. 'Swiftly dial back' interest rates, ECB told
  7. Moscow's terror attack, security and Gaza
  8. Why UK-EU defence and security deal may be difficult

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us