“I am against Ukraine’s EU entry,” says Polish president-elect in first foreign interview

Poland’s president-elect, Karol Nawrocki, has confirmed his opposition to Ukraine’s proposed accession to the European Union in his first interview with a foreign media outlet since being elected on 1 June.

However, he also emphasised that Poland “must support Ukraine from a strategic and geopolitical point of view” because “Russia is the biggest threat to the entire region”.

On Saturday, Nawrocki spoke with Mandiner, a Hungarian news outlet closely aligned with the government of Viktor Orbán. Orbán was one of many global right-wing leaders, including Donald Trump, who welcomed Nawrocki’s election victory earlier this month.

Asked about what he thinks of Ukraine’s proposed EU membership, Nawrocki, who will take office in August, told Mandiner: “At the moment, I am against Ukraine’s entry into the European Union.”

That reiterated a position Nawrocki has set on the campaign trail. In January, he said that he “currently does not envision Ukraine in either the EU or NATO until important civilisational issues for Poland are resolved”.

That was a reference to the lingering legacy of the Volhynia massacres, in which Ukrainian nationalists killed around 100,000 ethnic Polish civilians during World War Two. Poland regards the episode as a genocide, but Ukraine has rejected that characterisation and honours some of the nationalist leaders as heroes.

However, in his interview with Mandiner, Nawrocki emphasised that “the Polish state must support Ukraine from a strategic and geopolitical point of view” because “the biggest threat to me as an anti-communist, and in my opinion to the entire region, is the Russian Federation”.

“This is a post-imperial, neo-communist state headed by Vladimir Putin, a war criminal,” added the president-elect, who noted that he is on a list of those wanted by Russia due to his role leading an effort to demolish Soviet-era monuments in Poland.

“We must support Ukraine in its conflict with the Russian Federation, but Ukraine must understand that other countries, including Poland and Hungary, and other European countries, also have their own interests,” said Nawrocki.

Poland’s interests included the exhumation of Polish victims of wartime massacres by Ukrainian nationalists and preventing “unfair competition” from Ukraine in the agricultural and logistics sectors, he added. “We need to reach a compromise and consensus on these issues.”

Nawrocki’s stance against Ukraine joining the EU appears to contradict the position of the Polish government that he will be cohabiting with, which is a coalition ranging from left to centre-right.

In January, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that he would use Poland’s current presidency of the Council of the European Union to “accelerate, as much as possible, Ukraine’s accession process”.

However, last year, one of Tusk’s deputy prime ministers, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, declared that Poland would not allow Ukraine to join the EU “if the Volhynia issue is not resolved”.

Tusk’s predecessor as prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki of PiS, said in 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that “Poland wants to speed up…Ukraine joining the EU”.

But, the following year, a deputy foreign minister in the then PiS government, Paweł Jabłoński, said that “without reconciliation of the [Volhynia] crime…there will be neither true Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation nor integration of Ukraine with the EU”.

Last month, Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, Vasyl Bodnar, criticised Nawrocki for signing a pledge proposed by a far-right leader to oppose Ukraine’s membership of NATO if he became president. Bodnar said it was “unacceptable” and “plays into Russia’s hands”. Tusk also criticised Nawrocki for his remarks.

In his interview with Mandiner, Nawrocki said that his election victory was the result of “a kind of social rebellion against the government”. He said that he represents “the voice of those whose cries are not heard in Donald Tusk’s Poland” and would “ensure political balance”.

Regarding his approach to Brussels, Nawrocki said that he is “a supporter of the EU, but of a union that is not a superstate”. He also criticised the EU for “remaining completely silent about the violations of the rule of law” by Tusk’s government.

The president-elect said that Hungary “is a very important partner for Poland” and that he would seek to “build up the Visegrad Group”, a regional forum of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic that has diminished in importance in recent years due to different positions on Russia and Ukraine.

Last week, Orbán welcomed Nawrocki’s victory, saying that the new president would provide a contrast to the “pro-Ukrainian, pro-war, pro-Brussels liberal government operating in Poland”. He also called it “a great victory for cooperation in the Visegrad Group”.

Main image credit: Patryk Ogorzalek / Agencja Wyborcza.pl