The arrival of Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki, on August 6, provides a stern test for the architecture of the state. Not because of the individual concerned, but because his inauguration has the potential to bring to a climax the systemic dichotomy embedded in the Polish constitution.
The 1997 text divides authority so that neither president nor prime minister holds clear supremacy. That’s fine in periods of political calm; it works much less well at times of partisanship.
Carl Jung once said: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will control you and you will call it fate.” Poland’s political unconscious is exactly this: a governing culture built on improvisation and tribal rivalry, and incapable of producing coherent statecraft. The constitution reflects this condition rather than causing it, enshrining a lack of unity at the top that mirrors the absence of a shared vision of statehood. (Take Nawrocki’s inauguration speech in which he promised resistance to both the pro-EU government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and to the EU itself.)
The dysfunction has been visible before. During the 2007-2010 cohabitation of Donald Tusk and Lech Kaczyński, a dispute over Poland’s representation at the European Council led to a Constitutional Tribunal ruling that, noting the Constitution leaves the principles and modes of cooperation “to practice and circumstances”, called for coordination rather than a single lead authority. The same uncertainty contributed to the 2010 Smolensk air disaster, when both the president and the prime minister claimed the right to lead the delegation to the Katyń commemoration.
Under Nawrocki’s predecessor, Andrzej Duda, partisan alignment masked these tensions. His loyalty to the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) meant the presidency posed no challenge to the government. The flaw was dormant, not resolved.
The coming test, where president and premier are mutually hostile, will play out in foreign policy, where both the presidency and premiership have rival claims to authority.
The regional environment is unforgiving and ever-worsening. Russia’s war in Ukraine and Belarus’s weaponized migration, keep NATO’s eastern flank under constant strain. Security increasingly dominates Poland’s domestic politics, yet Tusk’s government, sliding in the polls, has failed to project a coherent course. Announcements such as new ammunition factories are welcome, but undercut by confused messaging and procurement controversies. Tusk has declared that Europe lives in “pre-war times,” but the slow pace of rearmament despite record defense spending reinforces the image of a government reacting to events rather than preparing for them.
The opposition has little more to boast of. The insistence by the leadership of the Law and Justice (PiS) party that Poland’s security should rest primarily on the alliance with the United States ignores Washington’s declared shift toward Asia, while transferring more of Europe’s defense burden to Europeans themselves. Its admiration for Donald Trump may well be put to the test, especially if a transactional White House seeks a strategic deal with Moscow, demands higher payments for US security commitments, or imposes trade measures that hurt Polish industries.
There are choppy waters ahead at home, too. If Poland’s budget is not passed within four months of submission, the president can dissolve the Sejm, making it entirely possible for Law and Justice to return to power well before scheduled elections in 2027.
Poland’s rulers on both sides of the divide have too often failed to operate the machinery of government to the nation’s advantage. Administrations have tended to yield new faces with similar reflexes, such as aligning almost unconditionally with US military priorities without securing offsetting industrial or technological benefits[MB1] (for example the $4.6bn deal for F-35 combat aircraft), or displaying a poor track record of negotiating within the EU, often accepting key policy frameworks without extracting meaningful concessions. Poland’s vulnerabilities are thus sustained by its own political culture.
There are some parallels with Polish history here. In the 18th century, before the partitions by neighboring powers that erased Poland from the map, the liberum veto mechanism allowed foreign states to paralyze the Sejm through deputies who were often bribed or motivated by animosity toward domestic rivals more than by loyalty to the state. In the interwar years, the same dynamic reappeared, as factionalism once again undermined the state’s ability to act decisively even as external threats grew.
History never repeats itself but it rhymes, as the saying goes. The underlying dynamic of current events is eerily familiar to Poles. Without a unifying concept of statehood, governance remains a battlefield for political tribes, each convinced of its own mandate and blind to the need for continuity and unity amid the rising Russian menace.
The constitution’s balance between the president and the prime minister fuels rivalry when the two are from opposing camps. Without a single chain of command in foreign affairs, disputes spill into public view, decisions stall, and Poland’s position in NATO and the EU is weakened. When a truce is eventually reached in Ukraine, Russia will most certainly escalate elsewhere — through a hybrid blockade at the Suwałki Gap, a shift in NATO’s force posture, or other pressure points. These moments will demand rapid, unified action.
Breaking this cycle does not necessitate immediate constitutional reform, though such reform is ultimately necessary to correct the deficiencies it locks in. But rewriting the constitution will take time, and Poland cannot afford paralysis in the meantime. Three steps could be taken now.
First, Poland should create a joint crisis decision-making body, similar to France’s Defense and National Security Council or Romania’s Supreme Council of National Defense, with legal powers to compel coordinated action between the president, the prime minister, and key ministers within set deadlines. This would replace the current reliance on Poland’s National Security Bureau, which serves only the president, has no binding authority over the government, and functions only when political alignment allows.
Second, the state should codify a clear division of lead roles for EU and non-EU foreign policy, drawing on Finland’s clarity of responsibilities or the Czech practice of government primacy in representation. A binding protocol would eliminate symbolic turf wars and make Poland’s voice consistent abroad.
Third, a permanent expert secretariat, inspired by Lithuania’s State Defense Council, should be established to prepare unified positions in advance and preserve institutional memory across political cycles. This would ensure that national policy is framed in Warsaw before being taken to allies, insulating it from partisan swings and personal rivalries.
In 1787, James Madison called Poland “equally unfit for self-government and self-defense, it has long been at the mercy of its powerful neighbors”. History has indeed judged Poland harshly when it has failed to coordinate its leadership, but also generously when it has found unity and discipline.
The choice now facing Poland’s leaders is stark: overcome egos by confronting the flaws in political culture and institutional design, or let them dictate events. The new presidency will reveal whether Poland is capable of acting as an author of its own fate, or whether it will once again allow others to write the nation’s script.
Maciej Filip Bukowski is the Head of the Energy and Resilience Program at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation in Warsaw, a non-resident fellow with the Tech Policy Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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