The Year Ahead 2023
Poland’s Election Provides a Path Out of EU Isolation
Nationalist Law and Justice’s seven-year hold on power may slip as the costs of battling Brussels escalate.
Donald Tusk (left), then-president of the European Council, welcomes Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, in 2017.
Photographer: Sebastien Bozon/AFP/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Voters in Poland will head to the polls next fall. The results of the election could ripple through the rest of the European Union.
Once touted as an exemplar of the benefits of EU membership, Poland has become a headache for the bloc under the nationalist Law and Justice party-led coalition, which has wielded a majority in Parliament since 2015. Relations between Warsaw and Brussels have grown tense over policies that seek to curb the independence of Poland’s judiciary, chip away at media freedoms and limit women’s reproductive rights.