By most measures, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski’s insurgent bid to unseat European Council President Donald Tusk would seem a bizarre political moonshot: a virtually unknown Polish Member of the European Parliament seeking to deny Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, a second term despite overwhelming support from EU leaders.
But for Saryusz-Wolski, who has long regarded himself as the godfather of Poland’s membership in the EU, claiming a senior leadership post is a long-harbored — and notably unfulfilled — personal ambition. After spending more than a decade helping shepherd Poland into the EU, he has repeatedly come up short — both in Warsaw, where he failed to become a government minister, and in Brussels, where he failed to land his dream post as a European commissioner.
While he served briefly as chairman of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee from 2007 to 2009 and held a Parliament vice presidency for much of his tenure as an MEP since 2004, the disappointments and indignities have far outnumbered the triumphs: There was a losing campaign for the Polish Senate in 2001, followed by unsuccessful bids to become Poland’s European commissioner in 2004 and again in 2009 when Tusk, then prime minister, was largely responsible for passing him over in favor of a rival MEP, Janusz Lewandowski.
Saryusz-Wolski’s unrealized aspirations for higher office and longstanding grudges now seem to be at the center of his decision to abandon Civic Platform, the political party in which he served for almost two decades, and accept the nomination for the Council presidency from Tusk’s arch rivals, Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party.
“He worked all those years, and he was never a full minister or a commissioner. I think that grated on him,” said MEP Róża Maria Gräfin von Thun und Hohenstein, a member of Civic Platform.
A political blood-feud
Saryusz-Wolski, 68, stands virtually no chance of winning. But Poland’s official opposition to Tusk is an embarrassing — and unprecedented — rebuke of an EU leader by his own country. And, at a time when Tusk is struggling to maintain EU unity amid Brexit and a rising tide of populism, it is also a striking display of public discord, rooted in a political blood-feud between Tusk and the leader of Law and Justice, Jarosław Kaczyński.
Kaczyński holds Tusk personally responsible for the 2010 plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, that killed an entire delegation of high-level Polish politicians, including his twin brother, then-President Lech Kaczyński.
Donald Tusk, then Polish Prime Minister, next to Jaroslaw Kaczyński, during the 2010 memorial service for the victims of the air crash that killed then-President Lech Kaczyński and 95 others | Leszek Szymanski/AFP via Getty Images
Jarosław Kaczyński’s efforts to undermine Tusk seem rooted both in his personal fury and his expectation that Tusk, at the conclusion of his second term in November 2019, will return to Poland to run for president in 2020.
Kaczyński has faulted Tusk for not doing enough to support Poland while leading the Council, and for supporting the opposition against the government. “Someone who violates principles in this way cannot be the president of the European Council and absolutely cannot count on our support or our lack of objection,” Kaczyński told reporters last week.
In nominating Saryusz-Wolski, a member of Tusk’s own center-right European People’s Party, Kaczyński seemed to gamble that a crack in unity among the center-right might allow a leftist candidate with a chance of victory to jump into the race.
“As far as I am concerned, I will not participate in his eviction” — François Hollande on Tusk
But such hopes were quickly obliterated by the fierce reaction in Brussels and other European capitals, and a consolidation of support for Tusk.
In an interview published Monday with Europa newspaper group, which includes Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, La Stampa, The Guardian, La Vanguardia and Gazeta Wyborcza, outgoing French President François Hollande, the most high-profile Social Democrat on the European Council, said he was backing Tusk over any challenger, even from his own party.
“I myself proposed the candidacy of Donald Tusk two and a half years ago at the presidency of the European Council,” Hollande said. “I have no reason to question his candidacy, even if regarding the political balance it should be the turn of a Socialist. I’m trying to have a European vision rather than a partisan or a national one.”
Jacek Saryusz-Wolski and Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at the Parliament in Brussels | EP
Hollande noted that Poland’s support wasn’t necessary for Tusk’s reappointment, which is expected to be confirmed at a summit meeting in Brussels on Thursday.
“Can a country block one of its nationals to be the president of a European institution?” Hollande asked. “Not legally as the decision is taken by qualified majority. It is up to the European Council to have a political debate. It has the possibility to pick a candidate refused by his own party.”
On Tusk, Hollande added, “As far as I am concerned, I will not participate in his eviction.”
An unseemly sideshow
Even with Tusk’s reelection seemingly assured, Saryusz-Wolski’s challenge has created an unseemly sideshow, one that the EU hardly needed. It has also added yet more tension between Warsaw and Brussels, which have been locked in a bitter dispute over changes to Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal that the European Commission says violated EU rule of law standards.
In recent days, opponents of Tusk in Poland have referred to him disparagingly as a “German candidate” — bluntly alleging that his loyalties lie in Berlin and Brussels, not in Warsaw.
Poland’s move has even split the Visegrad Group of Central European countries, which has emerged as a powerful bloc. The Czech Republic and Slovakia have each voiced support for Tusk, regarding him as an ally of the emerging Central European powers. “Tusk helped us a lot in the past few years,” Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said last week, adding that it was important for Central and Eastern Europe that Tusk not lose his post.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has avoided taking a public position but his party, Fidesz, is part of the EPP family and has signaled support for Tusk.
“There is real anger in Prague and Bratislava,” said Milan Nič, head of the Future of Europe Program at Globsec Policy Institute, a Slovak think tank. Nič said that Warsaw appeared to jeopardize the interests of the region and the EU while waging a domestic political fight against Tusk.
“Accusing him of being a German candidate, this is really nasty,” Nič said. “This is already building a narrative for the time when he presumably comes back to Polish politics.”
Thwarted ambitions
Tusk’s office declined to comment on the challenge. A spokeswoman for Saryusz-Wolski said he was not available for an interview. But in a barrage of posts on Twitter over the last few days, he accepted the nomination, obliquely criticized Tusk for not defending Poland in the rule-of-law dispute with Brussels, and declared that he had not been promised anything for running.
Few in Poland believe the last point, and there is widespread speculation that in exchange for his efforts, Saryusz-Wolski will be appointed to the sort of prominent post he has long craved — foreign minister, perhaps, or European commissioner after 2019.
Jacek Saryusz-Wolski during a plenary session at the EU Parliament in Brussels | Stephanie Lecocq/EPA
The current foreign minister, Witold Waszczykowski, who has promoted Saryusz-Wolski’s candidacy in recent days, has suffered through frequent gaffes and infuriated Kaczyński when he invited the Venice Commission, a body of the Council of Europe, to Poland to study the dispute over the Constitutional Tribunal. The commission issued a scathing report finding the government at fault for undermining the tribunal.
For his part, Saryusz-Wolski seems to be angling to preserve a career that, while distinguished, never reached the heights he desired.
“Saryusz-Wolski does have a lot of achievements, but his ambition was never satisfied,” Thun said.
A history of snubs
Saryusz-Wolski was one of the few Poles who understood how the European Economic Community functioned, lecturing on European issues at the University of Łódź in central Poland, something that — together with his fluent French — made him indispensable when communism collapsed in 1989.
In 1991, he became the head of a new department of European integration. But he was quickly superseded by higher profile politicians, who took the lead in negotiating Poland’s conditions for joining the EU. Despite his years of service, he never became a minister, leaving for the European Parliament immediately after Poland joined the bloc in 2004.
Tusk’s role in the nomination of Lewandowski, who became European commissioner for budget in 2009, was clearly a sore point.
“I do not accept informing on your own country and supporting sanctions against it” — Jacek Saryusz-Wolski
Long a member of the Civic Platform’s conservative fringe, Saryusz-Wolski had distanced himself from the party in recent months, for instance by voting against resolutions in the European Parliament criticizing the Law and Justice-led government in the dispute over the constitutional court.
Tusk, by contrast, had sided with the European Commission — a point that Saryusz-Wolski hammered on Twitter this weekend. The post also highlighted Saryusz-Wolski’s view of his own role in Poland’s accession to the bloc.
“I do not accept informing on your own country and supporting sanctions against it,” he wrote. “That wasn’t why I led Poland into the European Union.”
After Saryusz-Wolski accepted the nomination for Council president, Civic Platform reacted swiftly, ejecting him from the party. On Monday, after meeting with EPP President Joseph Daul in Brussels, Saryusz-Wolski said he had quit the EPP political family after 26 years. Daul issued a statement saying Saryusz-Wolski had been stripped of his leadership posts.
“I deeply regret Saryusz-Wolski’s disloyalty and disrespect towards the unity and values of his own member parties,” Daul said.
Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło and European Council President Donald Tusk in Paris | Radek Pietruszka/EPA