
Poland's nail-biter election: Could Warsaw turn on Brussels?
43:22
From the show
Warsaw's liberal mayor Rafał Trzaskowski will need the kind of boost in turnout that propelled his counterpart from Bucharest to victory, Nicoşur Dan who last weekend came to campaign for the candidate from Donald Tusk's Civic Platform. Trzaskowski's not the only one with celebrity endorsements.
Donald Trump dispatching his director of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to stump for nationalist right candidate Karol Nawrocki. The Law and Justice party of the outgoing Andrej Duda hopes to rally the 20-percent of voters who veered further to the right in the first round. In a nation where living standards have skyrocketed since joining the EU two decades ago, why are so many citizens eager to elect Eurosceptics?
Would a Nawrocki win call time after just one year on the efforts of prime minister Tusk to undo the PiS' contentious rule of law reforms? Currently the former president of the European Council, seen here with the leaders of France and Germany, has positioned himself at the heart of Brussels policy making. Looking ahead, which direction do Poles want?
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


France 24
a day ago
- France 24
Mexican boxer Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. arrested by US immigration authorities: officials
Chavez, a former world champion and the son of legendary Mexican fighter Julio Cesar Chavez, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Los Angeles on Wednesday after authorities determined that he was in the country illegally, Homeland Security said in a statement. He has an active arrest warrant in Mexico for involvement in organized crime and made fraudulent statements on his application for US permanent residency, it added. Homeland Security said Chavez is believed to be an affiliate of the Sinaloa cartel, one of six Mexican drug trafficking groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United States. Chavez, 39, is a former World Boxing Council middleweight world champion, but in his most recent fight was convincingly beaten by YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul in a one-sided cruiserweight bout in Anaheim, California, on Saturday. Homeland Security said Chavez had entered the United States legally in 2023 on a tourist visa that was valid until February 2024. In April last year, he applied for permanent residence status based on his marriage to a US citizen "who is connected to the Sinaloa cartel through a prior relationship with the now-deceased son of the infamous cartel leader Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman." According to the statement, US Citizenship and Immigration Services made a referral to ICE that Chavez was "an egregious public safety threat." Authorities accused the administration of President Donald Trump's predecessor Joe Biden of not making Chavez an " immigration enforcement priority." Chavez was allowed to re-enter the United States on January 4, 2025 at the San Ysidro port of entry, Homeland Security said. Trump campaigned for president promising to expel millions of undocumented migrants from the United States, and he has taken a number of actions since returning to the White House in January aimed at speeding up deportations and reducing border crossings.

LeMonde
2 days ago
- LeMonde
Polish support for Ukraine's EU bid is eroding
A leading supporter of Ukraine since Russia's invasion on February 24, 2022, Poland failed to leverage its presidency of the Council of the European Union, which ended on June 30, to bring Kyiv closer to Brussels. In December 2024, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had hoped to open at least one chapter of negotiations for Ukraine's entry into the EU and claimed, "If it were up to Poland, the process would last only one day." That did not happen. These steps, which are essential to accession, require unanimous agreement from all member states, and Hungary has made no secret of its opposition to the project. The prospect became even more complicated with the election in Poland of a president who has taken a very ambivalent stance on the issue. Nationalist Karol Nawrocki, who won the election on June 1 with 50.89% of the vote and was backed by the ultraconservative Law and Justice party (PiS), pledged during the campaign to oppose Ukraine's accession to the EU. One week after the election, in his first interview with a foreign media outlet – namely Mandiner, a newspaper close to Fidesz, the party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – he declared that "Poland and Hungary must defend their interests with regard to Ukraine." On June 30, he nuanced his position, stating that Ukraine must meet European expectations and standards before being considered for accession, which is precisely the aim of accession negotiations – a process that typically takes years.


France 24
3 days ago
- France 24
Polish supreme court ratifies nationalist's presidential vote win
In the country's highly polarised political landscape, concerns had also been voiced over the legitimacy of the court chamber which will issue the verdict. Karol Nawrocki, backed by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, scored 51 percent of votes to win the June 1 runoff election, according to official results -- a major blow for the pro-EU government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk and LGBTQ rights campaigners. Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, the candidate put forward by the government, lost out by 369,000 votes in the country of 38 million people. "All of the circumstances clearly demonstrate that Karol Tadeusz Nawrocki garnered more votes than Rafał Kazimierz Trzaskowski during the second round of the vote," judge Krzysztof Wiak announced after a hearing, also confirming the election result. Prosecutors had alleged that the vote count was falsified in Nawrocki's favour at some polling stations, fuelling calls for a national recount. PiS dismissed doubts about the vote as an attempt to "steal the election". According to the Polish constitution, the Supreme Court had to validate the ballot before the winner could be sworn in at a joint session of parliament -- a ceremony planned for August 6. However, European courts and legal experts have questioned the legitimacy of the Exceptional Supervision and Public Matters Chamber, the Supreme Court body that issued the ruling on Tuesday. The European Court of Human Rights said in 2023 that the Chamber does not fulfil the definition of "an independent and impartial tribunal established by law". Justice Minister Adam Bodnar, who is also the prosecutor general, had asked in vain for all of the chamber's judges to be excluded. Tusk has criticised the chamber, but recognised on Monday that "it is the Supreme Court's responsibility to rule whether an election is valid or not". "It is not possible... for the Supreme Court to be replaced in this matter... by the prosecutor general or the government," the prime minister said. 'Paralyse the Supreme Court' The Supreme Court had received around 56,000 election protests since the second round of voting. Judges have already dismissed, without taking further action, more than 50,000 complaints, many of which were based on protest templates shared on social media. Supreme Court chief justice Malgorzata Manowska criticised the sending of template-based protests as an "operation meant to... paralyse the Supreme Court". Bodnar complained that prosecutors were not given access to all of the 56,000 protests and suggested that the chamber's examination of those could be nothing more than a "facade". Still, the court ordered the results from 13 polling stations to be recounted earlier this month. National prosecutors later said that in some of those polling stations votes were transferred from one candidate to another, mainly in Nawrocki's favour. Government coalition lawmaker Roman Giertych authored one of the protest templates, claiming that votes had been reassigned to Nawrocki and alleging ballot rigging. Giertych and several experts have demanded a national recount and called for the presidential inauguration to be postponed in order to clarify the alleged irregularities. These experts assert that the previous nationalist government and outgoing president Andrzej Duda introduced reforms which have undermined the rule of law in Poland. The reforms have long put Poland at odds with the European Commission, but the victory of a pro-EU coalition in October 2023 parliamentary elections mitigated the conflict. Parliament speaker Szymon Holownia, like other members of the ruling coalition, has so far firmly rejected the idea of postponing the presidential oath ceremony. Independently, Bodnar has ordered a group of prosecutors to examine "irregularities" in the vote counting. © 2025 AFP