Pro-MAGA Nawrocki vs. pro-EU Tusk: The power struggle for control of Poland

WARSAW — Poland’s MAGA-aligned President Karol Nawrocki is in a war for control of the country with pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

The sharp end of the conflict concerns the European Union’s €150 billion Security Action For Europe program — an EU effort (in part negotiated by the Polish government) to provide cheap loans to finance arms purchases by member countries. Nawrocki last week vetoed a law enabling the allocation of a €44 billion loan to Poland, although the government insists it will still be able to get the cash.

But SAFE is just one front in a wide-ranging tussle. Tusk and Nawrocki are sparring over everything from the EU’s social media law to the government’s efforts to restore rule of law, ambassadorial nominations, whether to swear in judges and even the EU’s Emissions Trading System.

Both sides are painting the struggle in existential terms as they gear up for next year’s crucial parliamentary election.

For Nawrocki and his allies in the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, the EU loan is a misguided effort that would make an independent Poland subservient to Brussels, and especially Berlin, while fraying ties with the U.S.

“NO TO THE LOSS OF SOVEREIGNTY,” Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, a member of the European Parliament and one of Nawrocki’s top foreign policy advisers, wrote on X.

Tusk is warning that the effort to derail the SAFE loan will inexorably lead to a Polexit — a U.K.-style Polish withdrawal from the EU.

Polish MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski attends a session of the European Parliament on November 27, 2019 in Strasbourg, France. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images

“I think there is a clearly anti-European narrative promoted by the president’s camp and PiS. It’s potentially very dangerous, because we see in this rhetoric an attempt to cast the European Union as an enemy and to blame it for the challenges Poland faces,” Finance Minister Andrzej Domański told POLITICO, calling the president’s approach “extremely irresponsible and contrary to Poland’s national interest.”

Suspicious loans

SAFE is a flashpoint because Poland’s political divisions are as deep as in Donald Trump’s America. Both sides have their own media ecosystems and are engaged in a winner-takes-all conflict, with social contacts between ordinary people fraying over political differences.

In the rest of the EU, SAFE was not controversial. So far 19 EU countries have signed up, and even conservative leaders like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán are on board.

While some countries have managed to rub along with power-sharing between presidents and prime ministers from different political groupings, it’s proving very difficult in Poland.

A protester holds a trash bin saying “Safe.” Polish opposition groups protest outside the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Poland, on February 21, 2026. | Marek Antoni Iwaczuk/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The core promise Tusk made when he led his coalition to victory in the 2023 parliamentary election was to roll back many of the changes made during the previous eight years under PiS governments. Those governments had clashed with the EU over efforts to bring the judicial system under tighter political control and saw relations with key partners like Germany and France go sour, while top officials were accused by Tusk of misusing public funds.

But Tusk’s program set him up for immediate clashes with pro-PiS President Andrzej Duda. The standoff grew even worse after Duda was replaced by the far tougher Nawrocki last year.

Now Nawrocki is trying to expand the limited powers of the presidency, while Tusk is trying to hem him in.

The prize is next year’s parliamentary election.

POLITICO’s Poll of Polls shows Tusk’s Civic Coalition is comfortably ahead with the support of 34 percent of voters, while PiS trails at 26 percent. However, the smaller parties that make up Tusk’s coalition aren’t doing well and he’d be unlikely to form the next government.

Just behind PiS are two far-right parties, the libertarian Confederation at 13 percent and the antisemitic Confederation of the Polish Crown with 8 percent. However, those parties are in deep conflict with PiS, and it’s unclear if they’d be able to form a stable coalition.

That’s forcing PiS to scramble to appeal to conservative voters, making Nawrocki’s SAFE veto a key political move. A survey out this week by the Ibris organization found that 56.9 percent of those polled were opposed to Nawrocki’s SAFE veto while 33.8 percent supported it.

While many voters are leery of the effort to block SAFE, the right-wing Republika television denounced the loan program with comments like: “HERR DONALD FÜR DEUTSCHLAND,” and, “A gang of traitors and Volksdeutsches is trying to saddle Poles with billions of euros in debt to Germany” — playing to anti-German stereotypes common among the Polish right. Berlin isn’t taking a SAFE loan as it can borrow more cheaply on its own.

Poland’s new President Karol Nawrocki (right) and his predecessor Andrzej Duda wave as Nawrocki takes over the Presidential Palace on August 6, 2025 in Warsaw. | Sergei Gapon/AFP via Getty Images

“I understand that blocking the law on realizing SAFE investments is an internal battle among the extreme right,” said Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski, adding that PiS had supported SAFE until it saw the rising danger from rival far-right parties. “It’s a battle for the anti-EU electorate. The danger is real.”

Playing the Polexit card

Tusk is hoping to capitalize on the situation by warning of the danger of a Polexit. EU membership is still overwhelmingly popular in Poland — which has for years been one of the bloc’s best-performing economies. However, support is slowly eroding. A CBOS poll last month found that 82 percent of Poles support being in the EU, down from 92 percent in 2002; among conservative voters, only two-thirds back the bloc.

Nawrocki and PiS insist they aren’t in favor of quitting the EU, just reshaping the bloc to make it more of a loose grouping of sovereign nation states. That aligns with the thinking of the U.S. administration, which strongly supports Nawrocki.

“Tusk’s Polexit claim is utter nonsense and yet another attempt to scare voters for electoral gain — a campaign tactic, plain and simple,” Saryusz-Wolski told POLITICO.

“PiS and the president support Poland’s membership of the EU, but with a sovereign role and on the basis of the EU Treaties — without competence creep or the usurpation of powers not granted to the EU, aimed at building a centralized European superstate in place of nation states,” Saryusz-Wolski said.

But years of skepticism about the value of the EU can also build momentum to quit — as happened in the U.K.

“It may be that they introduce this topic into public circulation somewhat cynically, that is, looking at it exclusively from the point of view of their own political interests, rather than because they genuinely want Polexit,” said Anna Mierzyńska, a disinformation expert.

“But the consequences of doing so may be such that they will not be able to control it, and that Polexit might start defining things more broadly so that the 2027 campaign is all about whether you are for the EU or against it,” Mierzyńska added.

Bartosz Brzeziński contributed to this report.