The remaining conservative candidate in the Polish presidential election, Karol Nawrocki, has pledged to oppose the European Green Deal, reject new taxes, and oppose the introduction of the euro if he is elected as the country’s next head of state.
These promises were made on Thursday, May 22nd, in a televised conversation with Sławomir Mentzen, a nationalist right-wing candidate who came third in the first round of the election and did not make it through to the runoff, which takes place on June 1st.
Mentzen had urged Nawrocki—an independent candidate supported by the conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party—to agree to a list of declarations in return for his endorsement.
The first round of voting on May 18th was won by the liberal Europhile Mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, who received 31.4% of the votes. He was followed by Nawrocki on 29.5% and Mentzen on 14.8%.
Receiving the endorsement of Mentzen and the vote of his supporters would give a big boost to Nawrocki’s chances of getting elected as the country’s next president. He may also benefit from the votes of fourth-place candidate, right-wing Grzegorz Braun, who got 6.3%
Speaking on Thursday, Nawrocki also said that as president he would oppose the “hate speech” laws currently being proposed by the left-liberal government, adding that “freedom of speech is one of the cornerstones of Polish democracy.”
The conservative politician said he would stop efforts to deploy Polish soldiers to Ukrainian territory, but he would gladly “send Polish entrepreneurs there once Ukraine begins its reconstruction.”
During his election campaign, Nawrocki deviated from the mainstream narrative and was critical of Ukraine, and said the war-torn country should not be admitted into either the European Union or NATO “until important civilisational issues for Poland are resolved.”
He referred to the Volhynia massacres, in which Ukrainian nationalists killed around 100,000 ethnic Polish civilians during the Second World War. “A country that is not able to account for a very brutal crime against 120,000 of its neighbours cannot be part of international alliances,” Nawrocki said.
On Thursday, Nawrocki repeated his stance, saying he won’t support NATO membership for Ukraine. “The Ukrainian state is not ready for many processes,” he said, pointing to corruption in Poland’s eastern neighbour.
