Who will lead Poland's opposition into election and why it is a worrying signal for Ukraine
Parliamentary elections are set to be held in Poland next autumn and the current right-wing opposition has every chance of returning to power.
The largest opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS), has announced the name of its candidate for prime minister. He is expected to lead the party into the elections.
That candidate is the rather controversial politician Przemysław Czarnek, known in particular for his extremely tough rhetoric on issues of historical memory and relations with Kyiv.
Read more about PiS’s prime-ministerial candidate and how relations with Ukraine might change if he is appointed in the article by international affairs expert Stanislav Zhelikhovskyi and Yurii Panchenko, European Pravda's editor: A conservative and critic of Ukraine: what is known about PiS’s candidate for Poland’s prime minister.
Young, promising and without a negative rating – this formula seemed to be the recipe for success for PiS.
Exactly this helped party leader Jarosław Kaczyński chose presidential candidates in 2015 (Andrzej Duda) and 2025 (Karol Nawrocki). The same strategy also worked in parliamentary elections, except for the most recent ones when the party list was headed by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who had accumulated a significant negative rating while in office.
The former head of government was also seriously seeking the party’s nomination for prime minister even if only as a shadow candidate. In particular, a sizable group within the party orients itself around Morawiecki, which already gives grounds to speak about the risk of an internal split within PiS.
Thus, far from everyone in Law and Justice approved the choice of Przemysław Czarnek.
For the opponents of this political force, his nomination effectively became an equation between PiS and the far-right.
Many observers see Czarnek’s selection as a signal of a further shift in the party’s rhetoric to the right.
The former minister of education and science is known for his hardline conservative views (including openly homophobic and misogynistic ones), as well as sharp rhetoric on issues of culture, history and national identity.
In particular, he is known as the author of Lex Czarnek, an ultra-conservative reform of the education system drafted in 2021 that proved so radical that the corresponding bill was eventually vetoed by President Duda.
In addition, Czarnek displays a certain form of Trumpism. Despite being a professor and having served as minister of education, and before that as the Lublin voivode, he tries to present himself as an ordinary Pole challenging the political elite.
Backing such a politician may be linked to competition for the right-wing electorate.
Competition on the right flank cannot fail to affect relations with Ukraine.
It should be acknowledged that within PiS, Przemysław Czarnek is among the politicians most critical of Ukraine.
In particular, he has repeatedly stated that Ukraine’s integration into European and Euro-Atlantic structures should be linked to resolving historical disputes between the two countries. This primarily concerns the issue of exhuming Polish victims of the Volhynia tragedy, as well as a broader dialogue on historical memory.
There are reasons to expect that in the next election campaign PiS will intensify its criticism of Ukraine, trying in this way to take votes away from more openly anti-Ukrainian competitors.
Although there are many politicians friendly towards Ukraine within PiS, Czarnek’s views could gradually shape a new mainstream within the party.
It is still unknown whether the current nomination means that Przemysław Czarnek will become the next head of the Polish government. A PiS victory is not guaranteed. And even in the event of an electoral win, it is not certain that this particular candidate would become prime minister.