He also said it was a menace to free speech and democracy that other democratic parties in Germany rejected the idea of forming a government that would include the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
But by the end of May, the US Republicans were complaining that the EU’s governing body the European Commission wasn’t doing more to push Poland to elect the rightwing candidate in Sunday’s Presidential race.
I think there may be a pattern here …
U.S. Republican lawmakers are reproaching the European Commission for taking a hands-off approach to Poland’s presidential election despite what the Americans say is a bias in favor of establishment centrist candidate Rafał Trzaskowski.As it turned out, the Trumpista candidate of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) did win a bare majority in the Polish Presidential race last Sunday:
Brian Mast, chair of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, wrote a letter, signed by other House members, to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to express “profound alarm over reported developments in Poland that may undermine the integrity of its democratic processes.” (1)
Conservative Karol Nawrocki’s victory in Poland’s weekend presidential runoff has set the country on a more nationalist course — and cast doubt on the viability of the centrist government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk after the defeat of his liberal ally.The President in Poland is the head of state and has veto power over budgets passed by Parliament, so he does have the ability to influence policy and legislation. However, the head of government is the Prime Minister, an office current held by Donald Tusk.
Nawrocki, who was supported by U.S. President Donald Trump, won 50.89% of votes in a very tight race against Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who received 49.11%, according to the final results of Sunday’s runoff published Monday morning. (2)
Deutsche Welle reported on the Presidential vote: (3)
Tusk is the head of a centrist coalition headed by his Civic Coalition party. He has called for a formal vote of confidence that is scheduled for June 11 to reaffirm his own position as Prime Minister. Since taking office in December 2023, he has moved to meet some of the objections the EU has had for authoritarian measures taken by the previous PiS government. A central issue is that the PiS had taken substantial steps to nullify the independence of the judiciary, a common goal of authoritarian governments. Tusk’s government has made substantial progress in that direction.
Dan Perry reports:
Anyone wondering what motivates the ferocity of the Trump administration’s attack on higher education and scientific research in America might look at the numbers behind this past weekend’s victory of the Trump-aligned presidential candidate in Poland.Can there be a Nationalist International?
Karol Nawrocki, a nationalist who narrowly defeated liberal the pro-European Rafał Trzaskowski, is no ordinary conservative. The former boxer and football hooligan with alleged ties to organized crime is backed by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which governed Poland from 2015 to 2023 with a Trumpian determination to mutate the country’s hard-earned democracy into authoritarianism. So he is backed by Trumpworld.
During its stint in government, PiS did all it could to neuter the independent judiciary, attack independent news media, consolidate political control over the civil service and undermine civil society. Nawrocki is now positioned to block the fixes being attempted by centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk and engineer his replacement. [my emphasis] (4)
Since nationalism and xenophobia are characteristic elements of authoritarian rightwing political movements – certainly including the Trumpified Republican Part currently in power in the US – it seems surprising that far-right nationalist parties would cooperate politically across national borders. The idea of a Nationalist International is bizarre on its face. Although not a few conservatives found things to admire in Mussolini. (5)
But this is not new. Mussolini was certainly an Italian nationalist and that was a central feature of his politics. But far-right parties in Europe, including Hitler’s National Socialist (Nazi) Party, looked to Mussolini’s Italian model for his own politics. But Germany supported Italy’s colonial war in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) of 1935-1936, now known as the Italo-Ethiopian War or the second Italo-Ethiopian War. Hitler’s and Mussolini’s government actively supported Francisco Franco’s revolt against the Spanish Republic.
But when Hitler’s government first attempted to annex Austria in 1934, Mussolni’s government backed Austria’s new “Austrofascist” dictatorship against Hitler Germany:
Faced with a severe economic crisis caused by the Great Depression, [Austrian Chancellor Engelbert] Dollfuss decided against joining Germany in a customs union, a course advocated by many Austrians. He was in part dissuaded by a League of Nations loan of $9,000,000 and by the fear of Allied countermeasures. Severely criticized by Social Democrats, Pan-German nationalists, and Austrian Nazis, he countered by drifting toward an increasingly authoritarian regime. The Italian leader Benito Mussolini became his principal foreign ally. Italy guaranteed Austrian independence at Riccione (August 1933), but in return Austria had to abolish all political parties and reform its constitution on the Fascist model. Dollfuss’ attacks on Parliament, begun in March 1933, culminated that September in the permanent abolition of the legislature and the formation of a corporate state based on his Vaterländische Front (“Fatherland Front”), with which he expected to replace Austria’s political parties. In foreign affairs he steered a course that converted Austria virtually into an Italian satellite state. Hoping therewith to prevent Austria’s incorporation into Nazi Germany, he fought his domestic political opponents along fascist-authoritarian lines.In this case, Hitler’s Italian model Mussolini supported Austria against Germany. But as seen above, Mussolini required Austria to adopt a fascist model of government in return for Italy’s support. But Italy’s reliance on Germany to finance its Ethiopian war and the German-Italian cooperation in supporting Franco’s rebellion in Spain made Italian fascism dependent on German fascism.
In February 1934 paramilitary formations loyal to the chancellor crushed Austria’s Social Democrats in bloody encounters. With a new constitution of May 1934, his regime became completely dictatorial. In June, however, Germany incited the Austrian Nazis to civil war. Dollfuss was assassinated by the Nazis in a raid on the chancellery. [my emphasis] (6)
When Hitler first became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, he was seen at first as a junior partner in the fascist “Nationalist International” alignment. When Italian King Victor Emmanuel III dismissed Mussolini‘s government in 1943 and arrested him, Germany freed him and made him head of a new “Italian Social Republic,” (aka, the “Salò Republic”) a rump puppet state of Nazi Germany. (7) That brought the process full circle, with Mussolini as a figurehead for a foreign government.
All this is a reminder that in a world of nation-states, ideology can be shared across borders. But nations also form their own conceptions of what is their countries’ national interest. And defending The Nation is of course the focus of nationalism.
This is one of the reservations I have about the democracy-vs.-autocracy discussions of the moment. Having similar ideologies and/or political systems doesn’t mean countries are automatically friendly to each other in foreign policy. One of the most spectacular examples was the Sino-Soviet split, the decades-long between the Communist states of China and the USSR. Today, still-Communist China and no-longer-Communist rightwing authoritarian Russia are close geopolitical allies.
Another example might be the current deterioration in relations between the United States and Canada. But that may not fit so well, since the current American government is pushing hard to turn the current US liberal democracy into some form of authoritarian government.
Poland and the current European realignment
Although far-right European parties may admire Trumpism as a form of politics and even of Vladimir Putin’s approach to politics and government.
But it doesn’t mean that all of them are wanting to defer to Russia in foreign policy. Speaking of Italy and Mussolini, the current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is head of the Fratelli d’Italia party. That party is not a immediate successor party to Mussolini’s Fascist Party. But it proudly shares some of its heritage, including some organizational continuity.
Profil notes that one of Fratelli d'Italia’s [FdI] predecessor organization was the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), which “existed from 1946 until 1995. Its founder Giorgio Almirante, a former propagandist of Mussolini, collaborated with the National Socialists after [Mussolini’s] overthrow in 1943.” (8)
Historian Joshua Arthurs explained in 2022 in an interview with Profil:
Arthurs: I find the question of whether Meloni is a post-fascist complicated. Her party, Fratelli d'Italia, has taken many different forms over the decades, often playing a double game. On the one hand, it presents itself to the mainstream as a conventional, conservative party. Meloni has already announced that she will support Ukraine in the war and rely on a policy of continuity in relation to the EU and NATO. On the other hand, "Fratelli d'Italia" uses symbols related to the period of Italian fascism (1922–1943) and the dictator Benito Mussolini. Meloni's party has repeatedly drawn historical revisionist references and tried to gloss over this period....So, the democratic component of Meloni’s and her party’s perspective is more than a little dubious. But unlike various other far-right parties in EU countries, Meloni’s Fratelli d'Italia and the PiS in Poland are not fans of Russia’s foreign policy orientation. The historical reasons are perhaps more dramatically obvious in the case of Poland, which has had centuries of experience with Russia that have often not been happy ones.
The Movimento Sociale Italiano changed over the decades. Until the end of the 1980s, "MSI" had very few supporters, a maximum of 8 percent. It was a fringe party for fascist nostalgics that was shut from the government. In 1989, with the end of the Cold War, not only Europe changed, but also Italy. The old parties that had dominated the country until then collapsed and the "MSI" took on a new form, henceforth called "Alleanza Nazionale".
Profil: Giorgia Meloni was active in its student organization.
Arthurs: In the 1990s, the Alleanza Nazionale tried to distance itself from the fascist past. Their party leader at the time wore suits like a businessman and traveled to Israel to apologize for Italy's role in fascist anti-Semitism. At that time, a kind of rebranding of the extreme right took place. The "Alleanza Nazionale" even entered Berlusconi's government in 1994 and later founded a party with him. Many MPs, including Meloni, were dissatisfied with this development. From their point of view, the party moved too far away from its fascist roots. So they separated and founded the "Fratelli d'Italia" in 2012. [my emphasis in bold] (9)
The same is true for Poland and Germany, although Polish grievances against Germany have more to do with reparations for the damage done to Poland in the Second World War.
In the current situation in which European leaders are taking very seriously for the moment the need to establish a military deterrence capability not so heavily dependent on the United States as the current NATO arrangement is, Poland and Italy are among the five largest European military powers, along with Britain, France, and Germany. They currently have a strong incentive to cooperate with each other on the new independent-deterrence goal. So in this case, even if Poland and Italy have governments that ideologically lean towards the authoritarian-right view, that also have strong incentives to cooperate closely with the countries with a more distinctly democratic orientation.
Still, election interference by Russia is a real concern. And so is election interference from the Trumpistas in Washington. So the EU has good reason to stick to its basic principles of democracy and rule-of-law. The EU itself is unlikely to be the coordinating center of the new European security arrangements. Although the EU does have its own military cooperation functions, called the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). And the EU Treaty does include a mutual defense obligation. But NATO member Britain is no longer an EU member. And when it comes to improved, independent self-defense capability, the European allies will certainly try to improve defense cooperation with NATO member Türkiye. Even though Türkiye is currently more part of the “authoritarian” spectrum than the liberal-democratic one.
The V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report for 2025 ranks Türkiye as an “electoral autocracy.” Hungary is the only EU country with so low a rating. Russia has the same rating.
But the EU as such will have to play a larger geopolitical role than before: in economic policy, on trade, in diplomatic relations. That will include increasing the attraction of the EU in its Eastern Partnership (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia) and its Western Balkan Partnership. The EU makes important decisions and laws that are binding on its individual members, so maintaining democratic institutions and a secure rule of law are critical for maintaining the EU’s internal legitimacy.
So it matters a lot whether EU member states maintain their democracy standards. It’s often mentioned that on formal foreign policy positions, the EU must have the unanimous support of all its members. While this is a real limitation, it doesn’t mean that the EU is unable to conduct any foreign policy. The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, can take foreign policy actions when it has substantial support from a majority of members. The EU often seems like a plodding, obtuse instrument. But it still gets things done.
Notes:
(1) Haeck, Peter & Kość, Wojciech (2025): US Republicans slam EU ‘double standard’ over Polish election financing. Politico 05/27/2025. <https://www.politico.eu/article/us-republicans-poland-election-financing-european-commission-rafal-trzaskowski-brian-mast/> (Accessed: 2025-01-06).
(2) Gera, Vanessa (2025): Nawrocki’s win turns Poland toward nationalism and casts doubt on Tusk’s centrist government. AP News 06/03/2025. <https://apnews.com/article/poland-presidential-election-karol-nawrocki-80a99eeb7a2f3ae64260a9263e7028ee> (Accessed: 2025-07-06).
(3) Pro-Trump conservative ekes out a win in Poland's presidential election. DW News YouTube channel 06/02/2025. <https://youtu.be/occF0fhIvXo?si=Lbk7tA7cQy5ivpyo> (Accessed: 2025-07-06).
(4) Perry, Dan (2025): What Poland’s election teaches us about Trump’s war on Harvard. New Eastern Europe 06/06/2025. <https://neweasterneurope.eu/2025/06/06/what-polands-election-teaches-us-about-trumps-war-on-harvard/> (Accessed: 2025-07-06).
(5) “After meeting Benito Mussolini in Rome in1927, Winston Churchill, then a Conservative member of Parliament, said that had he been an Italian, he would have ‘wholeheartedly’ supported the Fascist leader's ‘triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.’" Delzell, Charles (1988): Remembering Mussolini. Wilson Quarterly 12:2, 118. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/40257305>
(6) Editors (2024): Engelbert Dollfuss. Encyclopedia Britannica 09/09/2024. <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Engelbert-Dollfuss> (Accessed: 2025-07-06).
(7) Koenig, Duane (1945): The Establishment of Mussolini’s Neo-Fascist State. Quarterly Journal of the Florida Academy of Sciences 8:4. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/24313323>
(8) Tschinderle, Franziska (2022): Historiker über Melonis Partei: „Wurzeln liegen in der faschistischen Zeit“. Profil 25.09.2022. <https://www.profil.at/ausland/historiker-ueber-melonis-partei-wurzeln-liegen-in-der-faschistischen-zeit/402158598> (Accessed: 2025-07-06).
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