Not everyone in Poland is disappointed by the outcome of the American elections, far from it. President Andrzej Duda, from the ultraconservative Law and Justice party (PiS), which is in a stormy cohabitation with the Democratic coalition led by Donald Tusk, didn’t wait for the official results to warmly congratulate Donald Trump. “You’ve done it!” he exclaimed on X on Wednesday, November 6. PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski also said he was “happy” with the result.
In the run-up to the May 2025 presidential election, the Republican candidate’s victory has given renewed hope to the PiS, which had made him a privileged, if not exclusive, partner when it was in power from 2015 to 2023. Struggling in the polls, Kaczynski’s party is hoping to turn the “union of conservatives” on both sides of the Atlantic into a rallying cry, criticizing the overt chilliness that Polish liberals have always shown towards Trump.
Since taking office in December 2023, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has taken a number of swipes at the Republican candidate, even ironizing his legal troubles. The page has been turned. “I look forward to our cooperation for the good of the American and Polish nations,” he commented on Wednesday. On November 2, he had written on X: “Some claim that the future of Europe depends on the American elections, while it depends first and foremost on us (…) Whatever the outcome, the era of geopolitical outsourcing is over.”
NATO’s best pupil
This is the message that has prevailed among Polish officials since the announcement of the US election results. “Europe urgently needs to take greater responsibility for its security,” said Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. “When it comes to military spending and decisions on migration policy, Poland is already doing what our allies will soon start doing. (…) Poland will be a leader in the process of strengthening the resistance of the European Union.”
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In this respect, the country benefits from a strong argument: Its defense budget has risen to over 4% of GDP since the start of the war in Ukraine, and several tens of billions of euros are invested each year in modernizing its armed forces. This position as NATO’s “best pupil” gives Warsaw a card to play vis-à-vis the US defense industry as well as the next tenant of the White House. “I am sure that we will have many opportunities to find new joint projects to strengthen our cooperation,” wrote Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz in his congratulatory letter to Donald Trump.
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Publish date : 2024-11-07 06:06:00
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