Projekt Polska

Who will be the next president of Poland, one of the largest European nations? The presidential election in Poland has not yet been scheduled but is expected to take place in May 2025. However, it is already making headlines across the country. The Polish president, who serves a 5-year term, has a largely representative role but is also responsible for signing and vetoing legislation and exercising legislative initiative.

Political Capital Institute from Budapest has been conducting a five-year research project on the foreign policy-related votes of members of the European Parliament (MEPs). The recent edition of the Parliament\'s 9th term (2019-2024) and the first plenary session of the 10th term (2024-2029) included also Polish MEPs.

On November 22, 2024, the Civic Coalition (Koalicja Obywatelska), the current ruling political party in Poland led by Donald Tusk, held its much-anticipated primaries to select a presidential candidate for the upcoming 2025 elections. All KO members took part in this internal vote, a test of the party\'s democratic procedures and its ability to unite behind a formidable candidate to retake the presidential palace from the incumbent PiS-backed Andrzej Duda.

Many people still do not seem to be aware of the Putin regime\'s perfidious hybrid warfare against liberal democracy and the rule of law in Europe. It is therefore all the more important to talk about it publicly in order to fight against it. The European Liberal Forum (ELF) organized a panel discussion entitled \"Russian Influence in European Democracy\" on November 18 in Sofia with the Project: Poland Foundation and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF).

The June 2024 EU elections had a tremendous influence on the political landscape throughout Europe. That was especially the case for Polish liberals, since after the Civic Coalition secured new European Parliament seats, the Nowoczesna Party obtained four new MPs in the Polish Sejm, including Aleksandra Kot, the youngest member of the Polish Parliament.

In June 2024, the European Commission assessed that it was justified to open the excessive deficit procedure, among others, for Poland. In the EC\'s assessment, the published report justifies the initiation of the excessive deficit procedure for seven countries: Belgium, France, Italy, Hungary, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia.

As the Members of the European Parliament’s ninth term closed their books, we tracked the views of incumbent MEPs on authoritarian regimes. We used qualitative and quantitative methods to build an accurate picture of MEPs’ positions on authoritarian countries. We have analyzed 152 votes cast by MEPs between 2019 and December 2023 to determine the potential openness of these MEPs to authoritarian influence, particularly from Russia and China.

In recent days, the media in Poland have been dominated by information about the dispute over the election subsidy for Law and Justice (PiS), as well as the intense actions of the new government aimed at addressing the abuses of the United Right authorities. The awaited decisions by the National Electoral Commission and the arrest of former Deputy Minister of Justice Marcin Romanowski are the main topics captivating public opinion.

Despite the efforts of various political parties in the European Parliament, the elections to the EP are first and foremost national elections, and as Enrico Letta remarked, they will be \"a sum of national, domestic debates in a frame named European elections.\" As such the EU member states also differ in the campaigns and the narratives mostly used before the June votes.

On April 7, 2024 millions of Polish citizens went to the voting commissions to cast their ballots in this year’s local elections. Following the recent triumph of the \"democratic coalition\" over Law and Justice and a subsequent change of government in December, many got their hopes up for a landslide victory in early spring.