Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council and a former Polish prime minister, said Tuesday that he won’t run in next year’s Polish presidential election.
“I feel that we can win those elections, but for that a candidate is needed who is not weighed down by the baggage of difficult, unpopular decisions, and I’m weighed down with such baggage from when I was prime minister,” Tusk told Polish reporters in Brussels.
Tusk was prime minister from 2007 to 2014 as head of the centrist Civic Platform party, now Poland’s main opposition grouping.
During his time in Brussels he made clear his disdain for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, which won power in 2015 and which opposed his re-election as Council president in 2017. The government’s opposition has long seen Tusk as its favored candidate in the 2020 presidential election to challenge PiS-backed incumbent Andrzej Duda.
However, the Polish press reported this week that Tusk had commissioned an opinion poll that showed he was at risk of losing to Duda, who has strong levels of support among PiS’s core electorate and is one of the country’s most popular politicians.
The opposition sees retaking the presidency as crucial in reining in PiS, which won an absolute majority in last month’s parliamentary election. Despite winning, PiS took only 43.6 percent of the vote — showing that a strong candidate representing all the opposition parties would stand a chance of winning.
Tusk’s high profile made many opposition politicians reluctant to challenge him. Now that he’s out, a fierce nomination battle could develop.
Although he won’t run, Tusk made clear his sympathies lie with the opposition.
“I want to underline that I am going to very strongly support the opposition in these elections and will use every opportunity to strengthen Poland’s position in Europe and the world,” he said.
Last month, Tusk was nominated to be the new head of the center-right European People’s Party.