Donald Tusk may not be supported by the Polish government for a second term as president of the European Council, Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party, told the Polska newspaper.
“I can imagine that the Polish government would not support Donald Tusk for a second term in the European Council,” Kaczyński said in the interview, due to be published on Friday. “There are investigations being conducted by parliament and prosecutors that could see some charges filed against him. Should a person like that stand at the head of the European Council? I have my doubts.”
Tusk responded in a tweet, “Maybe a debate, Mr Chairman? About Europe, Poland and your insinuations. I’m available,”
Formally, Kaczyński is no more than a member of Poland’s parliament, but he is the country’s most powerful politician and has a decisive voice in the shaping of government policy.
Tusk was Poland’s prime minister from 2007-2014, and he and Kaczyński are old enemies. Kaczyński blames Tusk for the death of his twin brother, Poland’s former President Lech Kaczyński, killed in a 2010 air disaster.
Both Polish and Russian investigations of the crash put the bulk of the responsibility on an undertrained air crew that tried to land the government airliner in dense fog at a dilapidated Russian air base in Smolensk, killing all 96 people on board, including many senior government officials. However, many members of Law and Justice (PiS) back conspiracy theories for the crash putting the blame on Tusk and his Civic Platform government.
The Polish parliament, in which Law and Justice has an absolute majority, has set up a commission to look into the crash. The government has also cast doubt on the official crash report, which disappeared from government websites after Law and Justice took office last year.
The prosecutor’s office, now under the direct control of Zbigniew Ziobro, the powerful justice minister, has launched four separate investigations into the Smolensk crash. There are also plans to exhume the bodies of some of the crash victims in an effort to prove foul play.
Although Kaczyński has shied away from some of the wilder theories that accuse Tusk and former President Bronisław Komorowski of arranging the assassination of Lech Kaczyński in cahoots with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he has said that Tusk is “morally responsible” for the crash.
The April 10, 2010 crash has become one of the foundation myths of Law and Justice. The party conducts monthly rallies in central Warsaw on the 10th of every month, events at which Kaczyński frequently speaks.
Tusk doesn’t formally need Poland’s support to run for a second two-and-a-half-year term as Council president, but it would be unprecedented for him to rely only on foreign countries.
However, because Tusk is only the second person to hold the post of Council president, there isn’t much of a tradition to fall back on. The head of the EU’s rotating presidency which holds the post in the first half of next year — in Tusk’s case, Malta — is supposed to sound out the rest of the bloc on who should be nominated. Tusk’s term ends in June 2017.
The president is then chosen by a qualified majority, although in reality it takes a consensus among all 28 member countries to get the nod.
“I didn’t have the backing of PiS, and probably in the future I won’t have the backing of PiS on any issue,” Tusk said earlier this year when asked if he could count on the ruling party’s support. “I can live with that.”
This article has been updated with Tusk’s response.