Poland faces growing economic uncertainty over growing policy “gridlock” between the country’s two warring political camps.
That was the verdict of the Fitch ratings agency this week after days of insults and finger-pointing between the Polish government and the national conservative president, Karol Nawrocki.
Since taking office last August, he has exercised far-reaching presidential powers to issue vetoes on legislation covering everything from crypto-assets to chaining up dogs. The latest – biggest – veto row covers Polish participation in a key EU common defence programme.
The EU Safe programme was set to release almost €44 billion in loans for Polish defence. Nawrocki refused to sign the related bill, arguing it created financial insecurity and would make Warsaw subservient to Brussels and Berlin on security affairs.
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Prime minister Donald Tusk dismissed the claims, saying the Trump-allied president’s intervention left “Poles wondering whether this is treason [or] the work of lobbyists” – a nod to a Safe procurement ban on non-EU – read US – defence products.
Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski called the president a “liar and a coward”, subservient to the political whims – and personal grudges – of opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczyński, his political backer.
“The president submitted to Kaczyński,” said Sikorski, “and Kaczyński hates Tusk more than he loves Poland.”
Kaczyński, head of the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party and long-time enemy of Tusk, said circumventing the veto was further proof that the prime minister was “implementing a plan for German domination” of Poland.
In an unusual intervention, a European Commission spokesman said internal political spats in Poland jeopardised common European defence: “Security on the eastern flank cannot be a matter of domestic political manoeuvring.”
After talks in Brussels on Thursday, Polish officials said they had signed a modified agreement and that funds should start arriving next month.
Leading financial analysts have criticised the president’s Safe veto given Poland would have been by far its biggest beneficiary, with an entitlement to nearly a third of the total €150 billion loan pool.
Fitch analysts agreed with the Tusk stance, saying the EU was offering loans on favourable terms, “especially under current volatile market conditions” which could, in turn, “help ease debt service pressures”.
Poland’s public finances are likely to loom large in the run-up to next year’s general election. So far presidential vetoes – running at an average of almost one a week – have frustrated Tusk administration efforts to govern. Particularly fraught are efforts to roll back reforms of the previous PiS government that brought Warsaw into open conflict with Brussels.
While Tusk’s ruling Civic Coalition leads PiS by eight points in polls, political struggles of the prime minister’s junior coalition partners make a second Tusk term unlikely.
The PiS path back to power is equally uncertain, given deep antipathy between two extremist parties on the far right which command a fifth of the vote between them.
Veto rows have guaranteed the president regular headlines but, as a political strategy, appear to have divided public opinion. A survey out last week found 44 per cent of Poles think the president is abusing his far-reaching veto powers while 40 per cent back his approach.
Some analysts see the 46-year-old’s liberal use of vetoes as part of a plan to position himself, ahead of 2027 parliamentary elections, as the leader of Poland’s Maga-aligned national conservative camp.
If so, Kaczyński, Poland’s unrivalled right-wing politician for the last two decades, may yet come to regret backing Nawrocki for president.
Asked last week who they regard as leader of Poland’s political right-wing, Nawrocki came first with nearly 29 per cent support – 10 points ahead of Kaczyński.
[ Polish government plans anti-drone system with EU loans despite president’s vetoOpens in new window ]
