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Poland has a new president - far-right historian and amateur boxer Karol Nawrocki. He won by around a single percentage point in an election where voter turnout was high. NPR's central Europe correspondent Rob Schmitz explains what this will mean for a change in Europe.
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ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Exuberance from the supporters of Karol Nawrocki after his narrow win over the center-left candidate Rafal Trzaskowski, who is close to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a leader that many here on the right believe is pulling Poland in the wrong direction.
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SCHMITZ: "We won't allow Donald Tusk's power to be all-encompassing so that the monopoly of evil power that does not care about public money takes away our dreams and robs us of our aspirations," said Nawrocki to his cheering supporters. The win for Karol Nawrocki, who belongs to Poland's far-right Law and Justice party, was a surprise in an election when Rafal Trzaskowski, the pro-European Union, multilingual mayor of Warsaw, led the polls throughout the campaign.
JACEK KUCHARCZYK: He managed to paint Trzaskowski as sort of anti-tradition, anti-religion, anti-church, you know, leftist candidate.
SCHMITZ: Political analyst Jacek Kucharczyk says the surprise parliamentary defeat of Nawrocki's Law and Justice party in 2023, after eight years of governing Poland, was cathartic for many liberals in Europe who feared rising populism and nationalism in the country. But now, with this presidential victory for Law and Justice, he says it's clear that many Polish voters are still worried about creeping liberalism watering down what they see as their national identity - a fear that is at play in elections throughout the world, he says.
KUCHARCZYK: Fear of migrants and fear that the society will change, the conviction that liberalized societies of Western Europe have made a mistake, mainly by, you know, introducing multiculturalism and so on and so forth.
SCHMITZ: Kucharczyk says many Poles who voted for Nawrocki were likely inspired by the victory of U.S. President Donald Trump. Poland has a close relationship with the United States and President Trump received Nawrocki in a visit to the White House last month. Kucharczyk adds that Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government had been planning future policy on the assumption that its candidate, Rafal Trzaskowski, would win. But now, he says, those plans will have to be scrapped. He says Donald Tusk will continue to fight rising populism in Poland, but this election victory for Nawrocki will make it much more difficult.
Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Berlin.
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