Parliamentary election: Will the Polish election end the dispute with Brussels?

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda made ambiguous comments on the parliamentary elections in his country the day after. “I congratulate those who won this election with all my heart,” Duda said on Monday during a visit to Rome.

However, the president did not say who the winner was. Instead, Duda appealed to all political camps to wait for the official results to be announced on Tuesday. But who won the election? On election evening, both the national-conservative ruling party PiS and the opposition leader Donald Tusk from the liberal-conservative Citizens’ Coalition (KO) claimed victory.

According to forecasts, the PiS, which has been in power since 2015, will be the strongest political force. But their absolute majority is gone and there is no suitable coalition partner in sight. In contrast, three opposition parties would be able to form a new government under the leadership of former EU Council President Tusk. If that happens, a lot will change in Poland’s course.

German-Polish relations

The PiS government annoyed Berlin with its demand for 1.3 trillion euros in World War reparations; it wanted to win votes in the election campaign with anti-German agitation. But the majority of Poles have a positive image of their neighboring country, as the German-Polish barometer regularly shows. A bizarre PiS election campaign ad in which a fictitious Chancellor Olaf Scholz wanted to dictate the Polish retirement age to opposition leader Tusk went viral in Poland – in countless parodies.

Agnieszka Lada-Konefal from the German Poland Institute believes that a change of government in Warsaw would ease the bilateral relationship. “People will be more willing to cooperate – in German-Polish relations as well as in the EU.” The current opposition will be satisfied if Germany agrees to cooperate – for example on the German-Polish House in Berlin or a fund for compensation payments and future-oriented projects.

Dispute with the EU Commission over the rule of law and migration

The PiS has restructured the Polish justice system and is therefore in constant dispute with Brussels. The EU Commission has initiated several infringement proceedings against the EU member and is blocking a billion-dollar Corona aid fund. In view of difficult economic times and high inflation, many Poles doubt that their country can afford to forego the EU’s billions. Tusk’s citizens’ coalition announced during the election campaign that it wanted to reverse the judicial reform so that Poland would receive the funds.

However, there will probably be no change in Poland’s position on the EU asylum compromise, which stipulates that member states must accept refugees. The PiS government rejects this. Representatives of the citizens’ coalition expressed similar views. However, they want to take a more conciliatory approach and negotiate with Brussels to take into account the fact that Poland and other Central Eastern European countries have taken in many refugees.

Tightening of abortion rights

The tightening of Poland’s abortion law was probably the PiS’s biggest domestic policy mistake. In October 2020, the PiS-controlled Constitutional Court ruled that women are not allowed to have an abortion even if the unborn child has severe malformations. Afterwards there were weeks of protests. All three opposition parties that could potentially form the new government have different proposals for relaxing abortion rights.

Support for Ukraine

The EU and NATO country Poland has taken in almost a million war refugees from Ukraine and is one of Kiev’s most important political and military supporters. Recently, however, Polish-Ukrainian relations were damaged by the dispute over the import and transit of Ukrainian grain. Warsaw announced that it would only fulfill current military aid contracts. Before the election, the PiS wanted to win back the votes of angry Polish farmers. No matter who rules Warsaw in the future: observers expect that the relationship will quickly straighten out again.

PiS nepotism

What can also change: whether at the state-controlled oil company Orlen, at the central bank or the public media – the PiS had appointed its own people to all key positions. This should end after a change of government, Szymon Holownia from the Third Way recently announced during a TV debate: “Fat cats, pack up the litter boxes.”