-Analysis-
PARIS — Trump-Europe: 1-1, ball back at center mark. The result of Sunday’s Polish presidential election could be summed up with a soccer metaphor. But that would be unfair to the Polish voters who turned out en masse for a democratic election and who wouldn’t recognize themselves in this abrupt simplification. Polarization in Poland predates U.S. President Donald Trump and appears to be as deep as ever.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
But we cannot ignore this dimension of every European election now: the Trump administration openly supports populist or far-right candidates who are hostile to the European project. The 1-1 score refers to the last two presidential elections: in Romania, where the liberal Nicusor Dan beat the White House favorite, the far-right candidate; and in Poland, where the opposite was true, with the victory of ultra-nationalist Karol Nawrocki over the liberal candidate.
Washington’s support was clear: the Trump administration’s head of Homeland Security, Kristy Noem, attended a conservative rally last week and backed Nawrocki, while lambasting his rival Rafal Tzraskoswski.
Allying against the Old Continent
The logic is simple: Trump hates the European Union, and will support any force that opposes it or wants to weaken it. In Berlin, where I am right now, we bitterly remember Vice President JD Vance’s meeting with the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party during his visit to Munich, in the middle of the German election campaign, when he had refused to meet then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
This will be to the detriment of Poland’s growing influence in European affairs.
Emptying the European project of its meaning is what Trump’s main ally on the Old Continent, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has been doing for years, summing it up with a slogan: “Today Washington, tomorrow Brussels.” Orbán spoke of a “fantastic victory” for Nawrocki, while France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen hailed a “disavowal of the Brussels oligarchy.”
The Law and Justice Party (PiS), which won the Polish presidential election, governed with full powers from 2015 to 2023, a period during which it was regularly in conflict with Brussels. With Hungary, it is the axis of “illiberalism,” which had attacked judges and the media, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights.
The power to cause trouble
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a pro-European liberal, now finds himself in a French-style “cohabitation,” or divided government, with a president who has, above all, the power to cause trouble: He can refuse to promulgate laws, to validate decisions. And he’s going to use it, because the PiS wants to discredit the liberal coalition in government so as to be able to defeat it at the next legislative elections.
This will be to the detriment of Poland’s growing influence in European affairs, notably within the Weimar Triangle, which it forms alongside France and Germany.
All of this is in Trump’s favor. The EU embodies everything the U.S. president wants to destroy today: digital regulation, a military alliance that makes Europeans “freeloaders” in his eyes, and a certain idea of the world based on law — whereas Trump values force. Trump-Europe, the game is tied 1-1, but it’s not over yet.
