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NAWROCKI’S NIGHT: After a tumultuous evening, it’s official: Conservative Karol Nawrocki won Sunday’s presidential run-off in Poland, 51% to 49%.
Nawrocki - backed by the Law & Justice (PiS) party - has pledged to stymie Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s liberal agenda and ultimately torpedo his government by deploying the presidential veto, something already being used by Andrzej Duda, the outgoing PiS president.
Historic levels of hubris? Nawrocki’s rival, Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, initially claimed victory after a 9 p.m. poll suggested he was ahead by the narrowest of margins, with 50.3% to Nawrocki’s 49.7%. But Nawrocki refused to concede, saying “we will win”. As the results came in throughout the night, Nawrocki was proved right. By Monday morning, official figures had him on 50.89% to Trzaskowski’s 49.11%.
What it means for Brussels: The outcome could have profound and potentially destabilizing consequences for the EU, which was coming to see Poland as a reliable and major partner on mainstream EU policies. It is also a major boost to the hard right ECR, controlled by Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán who long allied with Law & Justice on the dismantling of the rule of law.
Euractiv's Alexandra Brzozowski has more analysis here.
UKRAINE
STUNNED SILENCE? There were limited responses from EU figures to Ukraine’s striking of Russian jets behind enemy lines Sunday. Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius cheered “Slava Ukraini” on X. Kaja Kallas, a Russia hawk, stayed conspicuously silent.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave fresh details of the daring exploit last night, saying that it was planned for more than a year, 117 drones were used, 34% of Russia’s strategic aircraft were hit and not a single Ukrainian injured. “This was an absolutely unique operation,” he wrote on X.
There will be a new round of peace talks in Istanbul today, between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators. Zelenskyy criticized Russia for not having produced a promised peace memorandum.
JUSTICE
EU-US MIGRATION COOPERATION: Donald Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi will attend a gala dinner with EU justice ministers in Warsaw tonight, ahead of a meeting where the two sides will discuss combating illegal migration and visa reciprocity.
The Polish presidency of the Council of the EU is hosting the meeting tonight and Tuesday morning. The Poles’ website says journalists’ access was cancelled. A Polish spokesperson reached late last night could not immediately explain why.
The meeting will be chaired by Polish Justice Minister Adam Bodnar, and cooperating to fight organised crime, terrorism, cyber-crime and drug trafficking are also on the agenda. This EU-US format takes place twice a year but this is the first one since MAGA swept back into power, and since EU-US relations were brutalized by Trump’s tariffs barrage.
Ganging up: Bondi is overseeing large-scale deportations from the US - some in the face of court rulings - and the EU is drawing up plans to process claims outside the bloc and deport more rejected asylum seekers. The EU and US are still negotiating an “e-evidence” agreement for sharing information about criminal investigations.
INDIA-PAKISTAN
SOUTH ASIAN WAR OF WORDS: With a cease-fire in place, India and Pakistan are sending politicians to Europe in the coming weeks to shape the narrative surrounding their recent conflict over Kashmir, a region claimed by both countries.
Ravi Shankar Prasad, an MP from Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP party, will be in Brussels this week with eight fellow politicians and diplomats, putting the focus on the Pahalgam terror attack in April and seeking to justify India’s military response. They have already passed through France, Denmark, Italy and the UK. Next week Pakistan sends a delegation led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the 36-year-old former foreign minister who is the son of the late Benazir Bhutto. |
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FRANCE
Far-left MEP Rima Hassan has joined Greta Thunberg aboard a ship bound for Gaza, aiming to ramp up pressure on Israel over its restriction of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the strip. Israel barred Hassan from entering Israel earlier this year.
ITALY
A political firestorm has erupted in Italy after insults and threats were directed at the children of senior government figures.
In recent days, the children of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini have been targeted with insults and threats - prompting outrage across the political spectrum. A university professor, who later apologised, wished Meloni’s daughter the same fate as a recent femicide victim, while Salvini denounced a torrent of online abuse aimed at his 12-year-old daughter.
Meloni on X spoke of a “sick climate” fueled by ideological hatred, where even death threats against children are used as weapons against their parents.
ROMANIA
President Nicușor Dan visited the Praid Salt mine in central Romania on Saturday, after severe flooding hit the historic tourist site last month.
Several hundred local residents gathered, demanding answers and urgent action. Many accused the authorities of ignoring underground water infiltration for years, despite long-standing concerns about the vulnerability of the mine’s protection system.
“You know very well that many parts of the Romanian state are dysfunctional,” President Dan said. “We need public pressure to make it work properly.”
CZECHIA
The Czech Justice Minister Pavel Blažek (ODS, ECR) resigned amid a scandal involving the controversial acceptance of a bitcoin “donation” worth approximately €40 million from a convicted drug dealer. Blažek insists his actions were legal.
An extraordinary session of the Czech Parliament is scheduled for Thursday, 5 June, 2025. Opposition parties are demanding the resignation of the entire government, though that remains unlikely given the ruling coalition's solid parliamentary majority. |
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Nice to Kluck-ing meet you! On Ursula von der Leyen’s Insta page recently: the Klucks. The elderly German couple, Christine and Heinrich Johann Kluck, greeted von der Leyen as she visited Aachen to pick up the Charlemagne prize last week. T-Online spoke to the pro-EU activists, who are involved in a citizen-led project called Pulse of Europe and have been married for 62 years.
Twins? Anna-Kaisa Itkonen is a European Commission spokesperson. Not to be confused with Finland's minister for local government, Anna-Kaisa Ikonen.
Don’t miss: The Chattering Classes, which dropped into your inboxes on Saturday night. It looks at Euractiv’s scoop about the shoddiness of an oft-quoted EU media poll, and the BBC’s downsizing in Brussels. |
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- EU’s agriculture chief Christophe Hansen meets India’s Commerce Minister Shri Piyush Goyal in Paris, as trade talks continue.
- EU-US Justice and Home Affairs ministerial meeting, 2-3 June in Warsaw, with Poland’s Justice Minister Adam Bodnar and US Attorney General Pamela Bondi.
- Commission President Ursula von der Leyen receives the Politikaward 2025 in Berlin.
- Parliament President Roberta Metsola on official visit to Copenhagen ahead of the Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU.
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Reporters: Alexandra Brzozowski, Alessia Peretti, Catalina Mihai, Aneta Zachová.
Editors: Vince Chadwick and Sofia Mandilara.
Top image: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images |
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