To hear Donald Tusk tell it, he’s gone back to Warsaw with a mission: to save the European Union. The former Polish prime minister and European Council president has launched a national comeback effort, targeted at toppling a government that is increasingly at odds with Brussels and flirting with all-out war against the bloc’s system of governance.
Tusk, 64, has faced his fair share of political challenges. He grew up in Gdańsk during the port city’s tumultuous uprising against communism, led Poland through the financial crisis and presided over the Council during its migration and Brexit dramas. His next battle is arguably just as important — and more personal — as any of those.
Poland’s governing Law and Justice (PiS) party has carried out a demolition job on judicial independence and put the country on a collision course with the rest of the EU through a challenge to the supremacy of the Court of Justice of the European Union. While a Polexit remains unlikely, the drama with Warsaw is nevertheless a drag on the Brussels agenda, sucking attention away from broader priorities. The fight also risks spilling out into other areas of EU policymaking: climate targets, budget spending and migration policy.
Tusk is painting his decision to return to the trenches of domestic politics as an opportunity to turn Poland around. “My role is, first of all, to help the opposition win the elections and help it sweep up the mess in the country, something that is growing dramatically in recent months,” he told POLITICO. “And there is a lot to repair.”
Some would say, to some extent, the mess is Tusk’s to clean up. The situation owes something to his own performance as PM a decade ago and his decision to accept the job as Council president in 2014. The resulting void in national politics was quickly filled by a resounding PiS victory in 2015. Since then, Warsaw has increasingly been at odds with Brussels. There’s no love lost either between Tusk and the leader of PiS, Jarosław Kaczyński, who has accused him of playing a part in the tragic 2010 plane crash over Smolensk in Russia, which killed, among other dignitaries, Kaczyński’s twin brother Lech — the country’s president at the time. That makes the political tussle over the future of Poland within the EU personal. “The intention of this government is the destruction of the union, or leaving the union as it exists today,” Tusk said.
Whatever happens, European leaders will be closely watching how he fares in the national election scheduled for 2023 — or sooner, should the PiS-led coalition collapse. The governing party still holds a firm lead in polling, even as thousands take to the streets to protest its policies. But Tusk’s return has sparked an upswing in support for his center-right Civic Platform party, even though he remains a divisive figure with many voters. The question is whether he’ll be able to turn that momentum into an election-winning strategy and make an unexpected return to the Council as prime minister once again.
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