AGI – It stops symbolic in Poland, the fourth country in the EU, this populist wave which in recent months had raised fears about the future of the European Union with the election victories of the sovereigntists in various countries in the north and south of the continent, from Sweden to Greece, from Finland to Slovakia.
Eight months before the next elections to renew the European Parliament, Poles went to the polls en masse, with oneAn unprecedented voter turnout since the fall of the “Iron Curtain” in 1989: almost 73% of those eligible to vote.
The “populist” vote for the ruling party PIS suffered clear decline compared to the previous elections, when it achieved 43.6%: If the forecasts are confirmed by the final results, the PiS, despite its confirmation as the leading party with 36.6%, would not succeed, not even by combining its seats with them potential ally of the Confederation’s far right to achieve a majority, a goal that the three united opposition parties would instead achieve.
Donald Tusk’s Citizens Coalitionwhich represents about 31% of the vote, together with the Third Way (13.5%) and the Left (8.6%), would receive a total of 248 of the 460 parliamentary seats, compared to 212 for the Pis+Confederation.
The “million marching hearts” that Tusk was able to bring to the streets of Warsaw two weeks ago have therefore received their election confirmation, despite the support of the majority of the press, which is largely aligned with the government.
In the center of the capital of the country with 38 million inhabitants, three flags are displayed in front of the presidential palace: not only the white-red national flag and the blue starry flag of the European Union, but also the blue compass rose of the European Union NATO.
Not far away, a memorial plaque commemorates the massacre in 2010, when the then president died in a plane crash Lech KaczyńskI, twin of the leader of PIS.
If national security is a particularly sensitive issue in the country, which borders Russia in Kaliningrad to the north, Belarus to the north and war-torn Ukraine to the south, the last eight years of the administration have been marked by… social tensions and conflicts.
From the rule of law to the restriction of the right to abortion to the issue of wheat imports from Ukraine, all issues have in turn led to a tense climate of mutual distrust in Brussels institutions, right up to the decision to freeze the disbursement of EU funds.
Recently there has been a scandal involving numerous officials who were accused of demanding bribes for the issuance of visas, while yesterday, at the same time as the vote on the renewal of Parliament, voters were also asked to give their To express opinion on four referendums that were considered specious: questions on immigration and others aimed at the many discontents that arose, among other things, from the massive presence of Ukrainian refugees, but they failed to obtain a quorum of 50% of voters to reach.
Despite everything, the PiS boss Jarosław Kazcyński He claimed the first party result, but admitted that he could not “transform it into a different mandate for our government: at the moment we don’t know, but we have to hope for it and know whether we are in power or in power.” “We will continue this project and will not allow Poland to be betrayed.”
Donald for his part tusk, TRUE winner After the game, he said he had “never been so happy with a supposed second place: Poland won, democracy won, we removed them from power,” the former prime minister and president of the European Council said. , returned to Polish politics in 2021. The opposition has promised to rebuild relations with the EU, yes, “to return to Europe”.
When the official results are known, probably tomorrow, President Andrzej Duda he will decide who to give the job to: it will probably be a member of the first party, the Pis, who will have two weeks to try; If, as expected, he does not have enough parliamentarians to form a new government, a member of the opposition will be appointed: a bit like the same scenario that played out in Spain after the elections last July.
There aggressive election campaign von Kaczyński, who accused his opponents of posing an existential threat to the nation in alliance with Berlin and Brussels, was not enough to counter the arguments of Tusk and his allies for a third mandate Law and Justice would have distanced Poland from liberal democracy, consolidated the ruling party’s control over the justice system, the media and state-owned enterprises, and brought Poland closer to the positions of illiberal democracy represented in Viktor Orban’s Hungary, which is no coincidence that Warsaw in many cases agreed in the conflict with Brussels.
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