Page 4 - bne IntelliNews Poland Outlook 2025
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 1.0 Political Outlook
    Another year, another (pivotal) election and its aftermath will loom large in Poland in 2025. In May, Poles will elect a new president after the incumbent Andrzej Duda steps down having completed his second and final term.
Duda is the last power stronghold of the radical right Law and Justice (PiS) party, which controlled Polish politics between 2015 and 2023. After losing their majority to the four-party liberal-conservative-left coalition headed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk in the October 2023 election, PiS is now looking to replace Duda with another party loyalist, historian Karol Nawrocki.
Duda has blocked key legislation by either sending it for review to the Constitutional Tribunal, a PiS-controlled body, or vetoing it. The ruling majority is not strong enough to override presidential vetoes.
There is little doubt that another PiS president will continue Duda’s obstructionism, in the hope that the Tusk coalition – which has no shortage of internal disagreements – will cave in if it is unable to carry out reforms, the promise of which mobilised voters in 2023.
For the Tusk camp, then, having a sympathetic president will be key to enacting the government’s agenda – even if this will also require overcoming substantial differences within the coalition, particularly ones pitting the conservatives against the Left, such as liberalising abortion regulation and civil partnerships, and also a more supply-oriented housing policy.
In the first half of the year, then, the presidential campaign will all but eclipse other issues. Presidential frontrunners PiS’s Nawrocki and Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, running for the Tusk camp, will have to lay out clearly their views on climate policy, migration, national security and everything else.
Trzaskowski is a strong favourite in the polls and it would take a disaster for him to lose to Nawrocki. The Warsaw mayor leads by roughly 10 percentage points in polls gauging voter preferences in the first round. The lead extends to 12-15 percentage points in polls asking about support in the run-off vote, which will take place if no candidate scoops at least 50% plus 1 votes in the first round, which is the current all-but-certain scenario.
For Trzaskowski, the challenge may be that he will be seen as a government candidate and any missteps by Tusk will automatically weigh against his campaign, which will have to seek a balance between securing progressive votes alongside those of the far-right, the latter
 4 Poland Outlook 2025 www.intellinews.com
 
























































































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