André Liebich, honorary professor of international history and politics and faculty associate of the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, analyses the results of the elections in Poland in his article published in Opendemocracy.net.
 

Andrzej Duda, candidate of the PiS party (Prawo i Sprawedliwosc, or 'law and justice') won the second round of the presidential election on Sunday 12 July 2020. He is “leaving a country evenly divided between PiS’s nationalist and conservative message and the Europhilic and 'progressive' message of Duda’s opponent, Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw.”

With the PiS party suffered a surprising reversal in losing control of the senate in last year’s parliamentary elections - even though it managed to maintain its majority in the lower house, André Liebich suggests that “Rural Poland may remain faithful to PiS but the larger cities, the future of the country, have shown once again that they will have no truck with the government’s nationalist and socially conservative message.”

He also places the terms of the Polish debate in the broader European context, highlighting possible implications in the long-term: “Polish representatives have confined themselves to ensuring that in the new EU budget Poland remains the largest recipient of EU largesse, as it has been in the past. This may be an uphill battle as European dissatisfaction with Polish Europhobia may well have financial consequences”.

Read the full article here.
 

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André Liebich's earlier article published in Opendemocracy, Poland: Duda heads for the second round, 29 June 2020.