A far-right outsider in Poland has leapt ahead of his conservative rival in the run-up to presidential elections in May, in another sign of how Donald Trump’s brand of populism is gaining traction in Europe.
Sławomir Mentzen, the Confederation party candidate, for the first time last week polled second with almost 19 per cent of voting intention in a survey carried out by SW Research. Up until then, Mentzen had consistently polled behind Karol Nawrocki of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which has strong ties to the US Republicans.
“This is the revolution of common sense that Donald Trump has led,’’ Mentzen told supporters at a rally in Bełchatów, central Poland, last month. ’’From day one, Donald Trump said things that are absolutely obvious, things that we all believe in.’’
The smaller, relatively new Confederation party has not attracted the attention of Elon Musk and US vice-president JD Vance, who have boosted other far-right parties in Europe, notably the Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead of federal elections last month.
That could now prove a blessing in disguise.
Trump’s recent bust-up with Volodymyr Zelenskyy leaves PiS in a bind: while strong transatlantic ties are traditionally seen as a vote-bringer in Poland, the US president’s recent embrace of Russia, his open disdain towards the Ukrainian president and the prospect of a withdrawal of American troops from Europe have alarmed Polish voters.
The outgoing president, Andrzej Duda, a PiS nominee who is ending his second and final term, was among the first European leaders to meet Trump before his bust-up with Zelenskyy.
The American president, who has threatened to withdraw security guarantees from European allies who do not spend enough on their armies, praised the Polish leader for his country’s “commitment to increase their defence spending”. Poland has the highest military expenditure among Nato allies, nearly 5 per cent of GDP — the target Trump has said he wanted to impose on the military alliance.
An expected Trump visit to Poland next month, just a few weeks before the presidential vote, could further complicate rather than boost the chances of the PiS candidate to make it into the run-off against Rafał Trzaskowski, the centrist candidate backed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his Civic Platform party.
“Trump and the Republicans have a long-standing relationship with PiS, but these events in the White House [with Zelenskyy] showed that this new American administration can change sides quickly,” said Bartosz Rydliński, assistant politics professor at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw.
At 38, Mentzen, who set up a tax law firm after gaining a doctorate in economics, is the youngest of the top three presidential candidates. In this campaign he has sought to play up his economic credentials and moderate some of his inflammatory remarks, such as sentencing women to prison for undergoing abortions or pushing for Poland’s exit from the EU.
In 2019, when Confederation first took part in elections, Mentzen presented a five-point plan: “We don’t want Jews, homosexuals, abortion, taxes and the European Union.”
Mentzen claims to be shaking up politics in Poland, spearheading a shift away from the Civic Platform and PiS, two parties that have alternated in power for two decades and are marred by the personal fight between Tusk and PiS founder Jarosław Kaczyński. “This fruitless Polish-Polish war must be ended,” Mentzen said at his recent rally.
In Bełchatów, home to Europe’s largest coal-fired power plant, which is set to be wound down in the next decade, Mentzen lashed out at the impact of EU environmental regulations on Poland’s economy. “The residents of Bełchatów will lose their jobs, they will lose their income if nobody rejects this green mistake,” he said to loud applause.
But the rally had the air of a business convention. Mentzen peppered his speech to a room full of men in suits and ties with economic statistics and promises of tax cuts and deregulation.
That was in contrast to past events, where he attended rallies with a glass of beer in hand, playing up his credentials as the owner of a craft brewery to bond with young ultraconservatives. Poland’s 2023 parliamentary elections proved an unexpected flop for Confederation, which secured just 6.8 per cent of votes, about half of what polls had predicted.
One supporter at the rally sporting oversized glasses adorned with Mentzen’s name said he wanted a pro-business candidate “to break the old and bad duopoly of Poland’s traditional parties”. Piotr Marek, an electrical engineer, said he was attracted by Mentzen’s “spontaneity, straight talk and real free-market ideas”.
Ignacy Niemczycki, a secretary of state in Tusk’s office, said it was concerning that support for Mentzen was spreading. ‘‘What’s particularly worrying for me is to see a lot of interest for Confederation from business, when traditionally business was very much in favour of liberal policies and European integration,” he said.
Mentzen is the party’s official candidate, but Confederation has been riven with internal feuds and one of its more radical leaders, Grzegorz Braun, decided in January to run separately as an independent. Braun has a record of anti-LGBT+ actions, racism and antisemitism that included using a fire extinguisher to put out the candles of a menorah lit for Hanukkah in Poland’s parliament in 2023.
Civic Platform’s Trzaskowski has pledged to defend LGBT+ rights and women’s access to abortion. He warned that not all the extremist decision makers in Confederation were as visible as its leader. “We see Mentzen talk about the economy, and we do not see all those who actually make decisions in Confederation,” he told a recent briefing of foreign correspondents.
But at the Bełchatów rally, Julia Bekus, 23, argued that Tusk had let women down, even though it was their votes that got him elected in 2023. Back then, the premier pledged to reverse the near-total ban on abortion enforced under the previous PiS government — only to fail to secure the support of lawmakers in his own coalition to pass new abortion legislation.
“Of course many women don’t like Confederation and I would have liked a more equal [gender] representation here,’’ she said. ‘‘But those who voted for our government can now see that Tusk’s abortion promise was just talk and no action.’’
