EU in need of ‘urgent repair’ – Polish president

Polish President Karol Nawrocki has said the EU “needs urgent repair” and criticized self-defeating energy and migration policies imposed on member states by unelected bureaucrats as well as a growing ideological slant within the bloc.

A poll by Eurobazooka late last year indicated that 25% of Polish respondents favored a ‘Polexit,’ with another 6% unsure, making the country a major hotspot of Euroscepticism. National daily Gazeta Wyborcza noted at the time that as recently as 2022, around 92% of Poles favored remaining in the EU.

In recent years, Polish conservatives have increasingly accused the bloc of imposing liberal social norms regarding issues such as LGBT rights, gender policy, and judicial reforms on their predominantly Catholic country.

Addressing a mostly Republican US audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas on Sunday, Nawrocki said that “powerful [EU] bureaucrats [are] making decisions that go against common sense.” He cited the bloc’s “energy policies that move too fast with no regard for economic reality and energy security” as well as “migration policies that fail to protect borders and social cohesion.”

“There are moves to centralize decision-making, sidelining nations and democratic accountability,” the Polish president lamented.

According to Nawrocki, at times, the EU leadership has attempted to impose “ideological projects” on member states in an apparent effort to “move us away from the values that built our Christian civilization rather than reinforcing them.”

In a post on X earlier this month, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed that there was “a real threat” that his country could leave the EU after President Nawrocki vetoed legislation that would have let Warsaw draw nearly €44 billion ($50 billion) in low-interest EU defense loans.

The government eventually authorized its defense and finance ministers to sign the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) agreement directly, bypassing the veto.

Tusk, who previously served as the president of the European Council, accused the right-wing opposition and Nawrocki personally of siding with Russia, US President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, and European Eurosceptic factions led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in seeking to “smash the EU.”