The leitmotif of the Polish presidency of the Council of the European Union, which began on January 1, is to be security in seven aspects. At first glance, the proposals are quite specific, but if you look at them more closely, you will see that they are based on "effectively moderating discussions," "developing recommendations for the European Commission" or "bringing about a compromise on a controversial issue."
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
Marta Tycner's text is the fruit of a collaboration between Krytyka Polityczna and independent Polish and Hungarian editorial boards, in which we look at issues relevant from the perspective of both countries..
A concert This is Warsaw!, an exhibition Warsaw - City of Free People, a carpet of 14,000 flowers arranged in the logo of the Polish presidency, and a special light and music show in the Multimedia Fountain Park. This is how Warsaw welcomed the beginning of Poland's presidency of the Council of the European Union in July 2011. Commemorative flowerbeds also decorated Gliwice and Rybnik, as well as my Warsaw housing cooperative "Energetyka," which received a diploma on this occasion from the then mayor of the capital, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz. All this in the framework of the "Presidency in flowers" campaign.
At press conferences and from the rostrums there were buzzwords. "A moment of history," said President Bronislaw Komorowski. The late medievalist Prof. Henryk Samsonowicz compared the Council presidency to the Gniezno congress, as it "confirmed Poland's place in Europe." A gigantic program of cultural events across the continent was planned. A promotional animation, in which a dancer in a shirt with a Slavic motif rouses an initially unenthusiastic, cool woman in a blue dress to dance, was created by Tomek Baginski, who by then had already received an Oscar nomination. The budget for the presidency was 500 million zlotys.
Today as if more modestly
With the beginning of 2025, we began the next Polish presidency of the Council of the European Union, which will last six months. Recalling today the pomp of 2011, one can't help but notice how much it was a sign of its times. Just two years later, on May 2, Komorowski took part in a parade of "joyful patriots" at the head of which a chocolate eagle was carried. Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly lost his electoral bid for a second term. The public gave expression to its fatigue with the empty symbolism that had already shone through from the 2011 celebrations. During the preparations for and during the presidency, there was a lot of talk about how groundbreaking the presidency is politically, how it strengthens Poland's position in the EU, but little about how this position is actually to be built - because, after all, not with flowerbeds.
In the hype surrounding the 2011 presidency, it is impossible to overlook the barely healed complexes of the periphery. 14 years ago, whatever the big world had to say about Poland mattered far more than what the Poles and Polish women themselves thought about it. Those were the days of the Europe can be liked program aired on public television, which thousands of viewers followed with baked goods on their faces, and which featured comments about the country on the Vistula by people whose only competence to do so was to come from the West. Polish public opinion and the political class, in particular, were greedy for all the praise and accolades coming from the global and European center. And the Presidency of the Council of the European Union (or "Presidency of the European Union" - as the media erroneously, but probably intentionally, referred to it) was supposed to mean that for six months it was the West that would listen to Poland, not the other way around.
Comparing the 2011 and 2025 presidencies, one can experience déjà vu: then, too, Donald Tusk was prime minister and Radosław Sikorski was foreign minister. One of the priorities of the presidency was the signing of an association treaty between Ukraine and the EU - now the opening of the first cluster of accession negotiations. But there are also quite a few differences. Tellingly, the budget for the upcoming presidency is also 500 million zlotys, which, taking inflation into account, means that the Polish government intends to spend noticeably less than 14 years ago. There is also less talk about entering Europe and recognition from the EU, and more about things to do and the technical details of meetings and negotiations.
On the one hand, this is a reality check. In practice, the presidency offers a microscopic - or at any rate, much less than the exalted press headlines of the past suggested - opportunity to influence EU reality. For six months, representatives of the country holding the presidency set the agenda for meetings of the Council of the European Union, so they can decide which proposals put forward by the European Commission to speed up and which to postpone. They then work out consensuses on particular issues among EU countries, and in this way can somewhat influence the final shape of proposed legislation.
The country holding the presidency also organizes debates and, if it wishes, informal summits of EU leaders, and presents a cultural program. It does not have the ability to come up with entirely new initiatives, unless it assembles a coalition of states and convinces the European Commission of an issue - but it can do that outside the presidency as well.
Concretes not very concrete
Changes to ETS2, the expanded carbon emissions trading scheme that the Polish government would love to push back and loosen, are mentioned as one of the topics of the presidency - but in fact Poland is mainly courting through other channels.
In the first half of 2025, the European Commission may put forward a proposal for a return directive that would make it easier to deport migrants. Although one of the goals of the Polish presidency is to "combat the instrumentalization of migration," the Commission's proposal will not be directly related to it. At most, Tusk, a fresh-faced defender of the EU's borders, lobbying in various ways for a hardening of migration policy in the EU, may portray it as his success.
On top of that, the Council of the European Union itself has no central role in the system of EU institutions. Power in the EU is divided between the Commission, the Parliament and the councils, where countries' positions are fused. There are two EU councils. The European Council, which gives direction to the Union's external policy, such as deciding on sanctions, is composed of heads of state and government. It has a permanent president - as of recently, former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa. The second council is precisely the Council of the European Union, which includes relevant ministers from member states. It meets in ten configurations (General Affairs Council, Economic and Financial Affairs Council, Competitiveness Council, etc.), and nine of them are chaired by the relevant minister from the country holding the presidency. The tenth configuration (the Foreign Affairs Council) is chaired by the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs - a position assumed in December by former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.
It can be said that the presidency has direct control over less than half of one-third of the EU's key institutions.
Poland, like every country, has outlined the priorities of its presidency. Its leitmotif is to be security in seven aspects. At first glance, the proposals are quite specific. Changing the way the Union finances defense. Changing the logic of the Green Deal, so that it doesn't make it harder for the Union to compete with the US or China. Defending Poland's favorable cohesion policy, the rules of which the head of the European Commission would like to change. Negotiating an EU pharmaceutical package. It is very possible that in some areas Poland will succeed in achieving its goals, but if you look more closely, they are mostly to "effectively moderate discussions," "develop recommendations for the European Commission," and "bring about a compromise on a controversial issue."
Recently, Rzeczpospolita published an interview with Jim Cloos, who worked for 20 years in the secretariat of the Council of the European Union and worked closely with the countries holding the presidency. When asked by a journalist whether the priorities of the presidency mattered at all, he answered honestly: "no." "We all know what our priorities are and they do not change, of course. It is known that now, for example, the key is our response to Trump or the future of Ukraine, or security issues in general. Any presidency would have this as a priority. This is not a Polish agenda, but a European one. The question of follow-up after the Draghi report (on the competitiveness of the EU economy - ed. note) is also obvious."
The presidency, then, is an unspectacular moving of things forward and shifting of emphasis, tedious and difficult to sell to the public. Perhaps that's why Poland wants, according to media reports, to take on the issue of changing from winter to summer time, which was abandoned due to the pandemic and the war. The Union has been preparing to move away from the time change, and this is an issue that, with smoothly conducted negotiations, could be closed in six months. It would be something perhaps not a priority among the challenges facing Europe and the world, but certainly palpable to ordinary bread eaters, potentially igniting discussion and easy to talk about. Unlike on the issue of competitiveness or the Common Agricultural Policy, everyone living in Europe has a clear view on whether they prefer daylight saving time or winter time. It is therefore possible that it is on this rather side issue that the Polish presidency will be most successful in terms of image.
Schedule after Orbán
But there is another reason for a calmer approach to the presidency than in the past. Poland today has a better understanding of how the Union as a whole works. And it is actually, and not just wishfully, approaching its decision-making core. The presidency is part of a complex game that the Polish authorities can already play quite skillfully. Donald Tusk is the golden boy of the Union, an experienced Eurocrat (he was, after all, head of the European Council), and after the recent elections a slayer of "right-wing populism" praised by the European mainstream. So he is emerging as an important figure in the European puzzle, especially since at the same time the Olaf Scholz cabinet in Germany is falling, and in France Emmanuel Macron is extinguishing another government crisis.
On top of that, because of the war in Ukraine, the eyes of Europe and the world are on NATO's eastern flank, and the Polish authorities (doing justice: both current and previous ones) are smoothly stepping into the role of local leader. It is also not insignificant that, against the backdrop of a powerful but weakening Germany and stagnation in many EU countries, the Polish economy is dynamic, getting stronger, and there are even signs of emerging from the middle development trap: real wages are rising, and the structure of the economy is changing to a slightly more innovative one.
If the government plays it right, over the next six months Poland's consolidation could accelerate. In January in the US, Donald Trump will begin his second presidency, and this means all sorts of shocks for Europe: economic, diplomatic, defense. The Union will have to take a new course toward the United States. At the same time, it is possible that talks about a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine will begin. Poland will face a dilemma as to whether to demand participation in them - because while this will build its position, it may mean that the Polish government will put its hand to a settlement that is very painful for Ukraine. Undoubtedly, however, it will be a moment to show itself on the international stage.
Six months ago, when Hungary assumed the presidency of the Council of the European Union, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán embarked on a peace mission of his own devising. He met with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on July 2, Vladimir Putin in Moscow on July 5, Xi Jinping in Beijing on July 8, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Trump, then the Republican presidential candidate, in Washington on July 10 and 12. He wanted to persuade the powers involved in the conflict to sit down at the negotiating table. The detour, which was not consulted with anyone, caused fury in Brussels. The then head of the European Council, Charles Michel, wrote to the Hungarian prime minister that he had "no role" in representing the EU on the international stage, and EU commissioners stopped appearing at EU Council meetings as part of a boycott.
Six months have passed, the international situation has changed, and Orbán and before his mission was not an EU favorite. Today, Tusk, too, would probably be dinged for propping up the presidency in arbitrary international initiatives, but already gently hinting at it in well-calculated moves would certainly get away with it. So while the presidency as such won't make Poland deal its cards in the EU or European international politics, in the long run it will allow us to pursue our interests more effectively. What those interests actually are and who defines them remains a separate issue. On the occasion of the presidency, the process of intense lobbying for the most diverse solutions, mainly from the business side, can be seen plainly.
Although the next six months may strengthen the position of the Polish government on the international arena, there is a danger that actual achievements will again be overshadowed by overblown rhetoric and pompous speeches. After all, the presidency coincides almost 1:1 with the election campaign before the presidential elections, and what could be more tempting for the Polish authorities than the promotion of the ruling camp at "over 300 events" in cities across Poland, at which KO candidate Rafał Trzaskowski may also be present?
Time will tell whether this time the tales of Polish achievements will be filled with enough substance to convince voters.
