Former Prime Minister Donald Tusk was elected leader of Poland’s main opposition force, Civic Platform, in party-wide elections this weekend, the party announced Sunday.
Tusk, who ran unopposed, captured over 97 percent of votes on a turnout of 73.3 percent of party members, local media reported.
A former European Council president and current chairman of the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest political force in the EU, Tusk announced this summer that he would return to domestic politics to defeat the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Tusk has been serving as Civic Platform’s acting leader since July, but his election on Sunday is likely to bring renewed hope to critics of the nationalist PiS at a time of high tensions between the Polish government and the European Union.
At a summit in Brussels last week, EU leaders debated the Polish government’s controversial judiciary reforms and a Polish Constitutional Court ruling declaring primacy of the national constitution over EU treaties.
The ruling “calls into question the foundations of the European Union,” according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Amid the rule-of-law tensions, Brussels has been holding off on granting Poland its slice of EU post-COVID recovery money.
On Saturday, Tusk told reporters that after chairing last Thursday’s pre-summit meeting of EPP leaders, which included German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he had guarantees Poland would receive the recovery funding.
“No one was planning to punish Poles for the stubbornness of the PiS,” Tusk said.
Tusk served as prime minister from 2007 to 2014 and was president of the European Council from 2014 to 2019.
POLAND NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
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