January 2025: the Polish semester

On January 1, 2025, Hungary passed the Presidency of the Council of the European Union to Poland. The country has already outlined its priorities while the other EU institutions experience new starts after the 2024 EU elections and the following nomination of a second von der Leyen Commission. The Presidency of the Council of the EU is not the only event on the Polish agenda: the country will also face its presidential election in May 2025, and it will have to deal with an unprecedented geopolitical situation with the implications of the war in Ukraine and Trump’s return to office. The challenges are so significant that one could almost describe this period as a Polish momentum for the EU.

A Polish presidency of the Council, a geopolitical one!

On January 1. 2025, at midnight, when everyone celebrated New Year’s Eve, Poland began to carry the presidency of the Council of the European Union. The presidency of this indispensable institution of the Union, which gathers every minister of the EU Member States, rotates every six months from one Member State to another. It is mainly symbolic as a 6-month chairing can’t do much at the European institutional level. Nevertheless, the rotating presidency of the Council enables the president-country to choose the priorities by controlling the timetable for negotiations and pushing for top policies.

The Polish government, which assures the presidency of the Council for Poland, has already presented its agenda and thus its priorities. Among them are the defence and security of Europe, the resistance to disinformation, migration at the EU external borders, and the environmental transition. Looking at prior announcements and the presidency’s official website, we can quickly understand its main compass: the Polish presidency vows to be geopolitical. The main focus will be on European sovereignty, a very French concept until recently…and how could it be otherwise given Poland and Europe’s situation: an almost 3-year war at its eastern borders, growing influences of Russia, China and Türkiye within the Western Balkans, the delicate situation in the Middle East, Trump as US President-elect and so many other global challenges. In the middle of the world reconfiguration, the EU and its pacific/passive attitude feel left behind, out of step with a world that has become bellicose once again. If the past presidencies and their ambitious mottos (the 2024 Hungarian presidency copied Trump by proposing “Make Europe Great Again”) tried to fix the situation, any of them truly prioritised it. Poland wants it to change by leading the EU to its first steps toward becoming a genuine global actor. Will it succeed? Well, it is too early to say, but what we can say for now is Poland has everything to do so…everything but a presidential election that could make Polish politicians choose the national political agenda over the European one.

The Poles go to the polls

Poland will face a national ballot to elect its President in May 2025. The current President Andrzej Duda, from the nationalist and ultraconservative Law and Justice Party (PiS), is ineligible as he has already served for two terms as President of the Polish Republic. As such, the PiS had to choose another candidate: the conservative and former president of the PiS-affiliated Institute of National Remembrance Karol Nawrocki. His main challenger, who is also the favourite of this ballot, is Rafał Trzaskowski. The candidate of the Civic Platform (KO), Donald Tusk’s liberal party, is the mayor of Warsaw and at his peak in the opinion polls with 36.2% on the first round and 56% on a hypothetical second round against Karol Nawrochi.

This election can be the second step in a new era of Polish democracy. Indeed, after the success of the Tusk liberal coalition at the 2023 general elections and the one-year-old reforming actions against the PiS’s stranglehold on the public and private sphere, the election of a liberal and pro-EU President could change the state of democracy by facilitating the Tusk’s government actions and policies. In point of fact, if the President is not the main political gameplayer, he can veto or slow down the governmental policies passed by the government and the liberal-majority parliament. A liberal President would consolidate Polish democracy and the pro-EU stance of the country.

But in a time when the Polish government and Polish public administration must chair and lead the council of the EU, a political campaign is not a plus. With a political world more concerned with elections than EU decisions, Poland’s presidency can turn into chaos. As we saw in the past years, national elections do not stop the EU decision-making process, but they do represent a major brake on it. Whatever, EU officials and heads of government seem confident enough: even if the Polish presidency fails because of the national political context, it is called to do better than the one before it, the painstaking Hungarian presidency.

A new balance for Europe and Poland

As an Eastern country, Poland could be said to not carry much weight in the EU and isn’t worth mentioning, as other EU countries can be considered more powerful. But this would be a misunderstanding of the new situation of power in Europe. Since 2022 and the war in Ukraine, Central and Eastern European Member States have gained credit by assuming strong support for Kyiv and an unmitigated mistrust of Russia when the Western Member States were less inclined to cut their ties with Putin’s Russia. In the end, the EU has spoken more or less with one voice…thanks to the actions and lobbying of the Central and Eastern countries, and especially Poland.

This gain in power within the EU scene is coupled with one of the strongest economic growth rates within the EU (5.4% in 2022, 3% expected in 2024), which enables large investments in energy transition and defence, two main sectors for true sovereignty. Speaking about defence, Warsaw seeks to spend 37 billion euros on defence, a record for the country and in the EU, it represents almost 5% of the Polish GDP. These investments in defence position the country as the first army of the Union in terms of men and modern equipment. Now, the Polish army is stronger than the German one and can compete with the French military. This new situation makes Poland an unmissable partner for any talk about the continent’s security, or even the first one to talk with. Poland emerges as the leading country of Eastern Europe, in a now East-centric European Union.

Can the Polish presidency of the Council of the EU change the Block? Not sure. But can Poland change the EU, the internal balance of power and the EU institutions? The question is out of mind…because Poland already has.