Split in Poland: Tusk and Nawrocki Clash Over U.S. Visit

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk is trying his best to keep the establishment order afloat ahead of new conservative president Karol Nawrocki’s first foreign visit this week—to meet none other than Donald Trump.

The PM stressed ahead of this meeting on Wednesday that it is his government that sets foreign policy, as per the country’s constitution, not the president. It is reported that his team sent Nawrocki instructions on the goals of the U.S. visit, which a spokesman for the president dismissed as a “joke.” A supporter of the new head of state also told Politico:

The government’s approach is reductionist. They see the president as merely putting a face to policy or acting as a spokesperson, reading prepared instructions.

Representing the country means something broader. The president, as the state’s representative, cannot be limited to a government spokesperson role.

Tusk has already made other efforts to limit Nawrocki’s power, including “paralysing” the work of the National Security Bureau by denying security clearance to its conservative-appointed director.

And following his first official meeting with the president late last month, Tusk said the pair only have common ground “on one thing: that we have lovely families and fantastic children.”

Tusk was already no doubt hurt—though likely not surprised—when Trump called Nawrocki rather than him when debriefing Europeans about his talk in Alaska with Vladimir Putin.

Monika Sus, a politics professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences, told the Financial Times that “there could at least have been a division of labour, with Tusk taking care of the European partners and Nawrocki of the U.S. administration … but instead we now have miscommunication and a power play.”

Wednesday’s will be the second meeting between Trump and Nawrocki, but the first since Nawrocki became president. The pair will reportedly discuss security cooperation and NATO.