Poles put May on horns of dilemma over EC presidency
THERESA May is facing a fresh European diplomatic headache after Poland’s foreign minister demanded British support for an attempt to oust Donald Tusk from his role as president of the European Council.
Mr Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, was due for a rubber-stamp reelection at the EU summit tomorrow until Poland put up a rival candidate.
The Polish candidate, Jacek SaryuszWolski, has virtually no support from other EU members states, but Warsaw indicated it still wanted British support for the no-hope candidacy.
“Saryusz-Wolski will be better for Brexit negotiations,” Witold Waszczykowski, the Polish foreign minister, told The Daily Telegraph.
The Polish attempt to unseat Mr Tusk at the 11th hour presents Mrs May with a nasty diplomatic dilemma only days before she fires the starting gun on the Brexit negotiations by triggering Article 50. She will travel to Brussels tomorrow for the first day of a twoday EU Summit where Mr Tusk’s re-election will be decided.
The Polish insistence that Mrs May back their candidate now forces her to choose between alienating the other 26 EU states by backing the EU’s most recalcitrant member, or upsetting Poland, the country seen as Britain’s foremost Brexit ally. “It’s a lose-lose situation for Britain,” a senior EU diplomat said. “Either Mrs May alienates almost all the other member states or she upsets the Poles, who she’s spent months cultivating. She can’t win.” .
Since the Brexit vote last June, Downing Street has mounted an all-out charm offensive towards Poland’s conservative ruling Law and Justice party, inviting its prime minister, Beata Szydło, to visit the UK last November.
In a clear sign of British determination to curry favour, Mrs May travelled to RAF Northolt to greet the Polish leader personally on arrival.
Poland’s quixotic decision to challenge Mr Tusk’s re-election reflects bad blood between the Law and Justice party and the European Commission, which has expressed concerns that the new Polish government is undemocratic.