Two weeks to decide future of Poland, Tusk says
Ashifa Kassam and Jakub Krupa in Warsaw
The next two weeks will “decide the future of Poland”, its prime minister, Donald Tusk, has warned last night, as the country prepares for a presidential runoff vote on 1 June after a nail-bitingly close first round.
Official results released on Monday showed the pro-European centrist Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw and candidate from Tusk’s Civic Coalition, received 31.36% of the votes. Narrowly trailing him was Karol Nawrocki, backed by the populist rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS), with 29.54% of the vote.
Trzaskowski had long been seen as the frontrunner, whose election would allow Poland to end the months-long standoff between the centrist-led parliament and populist right presidency.
Tusk and his coalition took power in 2023, promising to reverse the erosion of democratic checks and balances that had marked PiS’s eight years in government.
Their efforts, however, have been in part stymied by the outgoing president, Andrzej Duda, a close ally of the previous PiS government and a supporter of Donald Trump. Duda has used his presidential veto to repeatedly block the new administration’s reforms, prompting Tusk to comment last month in parliament: “It’s hard to govern alongside a hostile president, with all those vetoes.”
The stalemate has loomed over the presidential election, turning the ballot into a question of whether voters want to carry through with the political overhaul that began in 2023 when PiS was ousted from power in the country’s parliament.
With two weeks left before voters return to the polls, it was anyone’s guess who might end up elected as president, said Aleks Szczerbiak, a professor of politics at the University of Sussex. “I think there’s absolutely everything to play for,” he said. “I think it’s completely neck and neck, and in many ways the campaign is just kind of resetting.”
And on that note, it’s all from me, Jakub Krupa in Warsaw, for today.
Updated
New UK-EU deal to add £9bn to UK economy, government says
A deal clinched between the UK and EU to remove checks on agrifoods will add £9bn to the UK economy and lower food prices, No 10 has said, as the last-minute agreement was clinched early on Monday morning.
The deal – which will grant EU fishers access to British waters for an additional 12 years – will remove checks on a significant number of food products as well as a deeper defence partnership and agreements on carbon taxes.
The UK said the deal would make “food cheaper, slash red tape, open up access to the EU market”. But the trade-off for the deal was fishing access and rights for an additional 12 years – more than the UK had offered – which is likely to lead to cries of betrayal from the industry.
Officials have hit back at the criticism, arguing that the food standards deal will have huge benefit for fish and seafood exports.
The two sides will also begin talks for a “youth experience scheme”, first reported in the Guardian, which could allow young people to work and travel freely in Europe again and mirror existing schemes the UK has with countries such as Australia and New Zealand.
The UK said it would be “capped and time-limited”, though there is no agreement yet from the EU on the details.
Follow live updates from the EU-UK summit here:
