Why Poland’s Donald Tusk is best placed to be Europe’s ‘Trump whisperer’ | Paul Taylor

With France and Germany hobbled by political crises and Britain sidelined as a result of Brexit, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, may be the last national statesman standing to marshal Europe’s response to Donald Trump’s impending return to the White House.

Buffeted by economic, diplomatic and political threats on all sides, the old continent is ill prepared for a new chapter in which Vladimir Putin is pressing his military advantage in Ukraine before Trump can try to force a peace deal that could damage the interests of Ukrainians and Europeans. Trump, who has spoken of letting Russia do “whatever the hell they want” with Nato countries that don’t spend enough on defence, is also threatening massive tariffs against his closest allies that could split Europe and trigger a damaging transatlantic trade war.

Enter Tusk, a seasoned centre-right leader who once chaired EU summits, who has defeated rightwing populists at home and maintains good relations with the US, the UK, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte. By chance, Poland takes over the rotating EU presidency from maverick Hungary in the first half of 2025, giving it a chance to shape the agenda in these crucial months. Trump may hate Brussels but he likes Poland, where he received a warm welcome during his first presidency.

French president Emmanuel Macron, Italian prime minister Giulia Meloni and Hungarian premier Viktor Orban are each vying to be Trump’s go-to partner in Europe, but none of them can build a European consensus like the Polish leader.

“If anyone can warm his heart to Europe, it’s Tusk,” said a former US official who served in the previous Trump administration. The pro-American Polish leader is well placed to convince the Republican nationalist that closer European defence cooperation can strengthen Nato without harming US interests.

Poland, a fast-growing economy that embarked on a massive defence investment programme after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, rejoined the European mainstream last year after eight years of defying the EU over the rule of law, and picking fights with Germany, the EU’s biggest economy, and France, its only nuclear power. Bucking the illiberal, authoritarian trend sweeping much of central Europe and the Balkans, Polish voters ejected the national conservative government of Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice party (PiS), which had captured the judiciary, public broadcasting and state companies.

Political change in Warsaw has put the country back at the centre of EU politics. Tusk’s Civic Platform party is part of the European People’s party dominant in the Commission and the European parliament. Poland has revived the Weimar Triangle cooperation format with Germany and France – a diplomatic agreement to engage in regular dialogue on EU affairs. It has joined the alliance of Nordic and Baltic nations and is part of the Bucharest Nine grouping of central and eastern Nato members.

Tusk has been warning all year that Europe must be prepared for a looming war. Anticipating Trump’s victory, he said Europeans would have to rely on their own capabilities, declaring “the era of geopolitical outsourcing is over”.

For historical reasons, the Poles have an acute sense of the danger of Russian hegemony, and a determination to alert the rest of Europe to the need for stronger defences and economic security. Tusk has been using his convening power in the run-up to the EU presidency to knit together a variety of coalitions to try to press these objectives.

Defence ministers of the five main continental powers – the UK, France, Germany, Poland and Italy – met in Berlin in a new E5 format created partly to draw London into European defence cooperation. Foreign ministers of the Weimar Triangle met in Warsaw on the 1,000th day of the war in Ukraine to vow their continuing support for Kyiv. Tusk proposed joint naval patrols in the Baltic Sea at a meeting of Nordic and Baltic leaders in Sweden after the suspected sabotage of vital underwater fibre-optic cables last month.

Playing a prominent role in European leadership is also part of Tusk’s strategy to entrench his dominance at home by ensuring that his party’s candidate, Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, wins the election to replace the rightwing president, Andrzej Duda, in May. Duda, a two-term PiS nominee, has used his powers to thwart Tusk’s reform agenda and block his diplomatic and judicial appointments, frustrating progressive Poles who had high hopes of improving gay rights and overturning bans on abortion.

But domestic politics could constrain his ability to exert EU leadership in some areas, and European affairs could even backfire on him. For example, Tusk sided with Polish farmers and truck drivers in their protests against the unrestricted opening of the EU market to Ukrainian grain imports and road hauliers. He also stirred controversy in October by threatening to suspend EU asylum rules at Poland’s eastern border to prevent the weaponisation of migrants by Belarus and Russia.

Poland welcomed, housed and put to work about 1 million Ukrainian refugees in 2022. But a potential fresh influx in the wake of devastating Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure could strain Polish resources and fuel nationalist candidates in the presidential poll.

Despite these domestic pitfalls, Tusk seems better placed than others to make his mark as Europe’s “Trump whisperer” and try to keep a fractious EU united in support of Ukraine as it hunkers down for Hurricane Donald.

• Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre