Photo: © European Union, 2024, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The announcement that Poland’s new Europhile prime minister Donald Tusk is the latest recipient of the Chatham House Prize for “restoring democracy” in his country has met with widespread derision. Critics have pointed out how his government has jailed opposition MPs, deployed police against the state broadcaster, and purged the judiciary six months after taking office.
Chatham House is one of the world’s leading international foreign policy think tanks and a meeting place for global elites. It announced Tusk as the winner of their 2024 annual prize for, among other things, “upholding the principles of the rule of law” and promoting the “democratic values of the European Union.”
Tusk is expected to accept the award in person next month in London.
The former European Council President is currently working to unlock €137 billion of EU funding while his Civic Coalition government and left-wing allies purge Poland’s institutions of anyone suspected of being sympathetic to the former conservative Law and Justice government.
While many online commentators mocked Chatham House’s decision to grant Tusk the award, Polish MEP and former Secretary of State for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Arkadiusz Mularczyk in comments to The European Conservative questioned how the politician could win the prize despite not implementing any domestic reforms.
It is astonishing to see that certain groups and elites in Western Europe are praising or rewarding Tusk for “restoring” democracy in Poland. Tusk has implemented no changes in Poland. Tusk can point to no law he has passed to reform the legal system or any change he has implemented to any structure within Poland’s legal system, yet somehow, Poland is seen to no longer be breaking the rule of law.
Mularczyk went on to raise the possibility of a hidden ‘agenda’ at play in Western machinations towards Poland, pointing out Tusk’s overruling of Warsaw’s conservative President Andrzej Duda, even contrary to court findings, in recent months as a salient example of recent rule-of-law violations by the country’s new administration.
A politically motivated police raid on the Polish presidential palace in January to arrest opposition MPs on alleged charges of corruption also added to Warsaw’s bitter power struggle. Several right-wing MEPs are also facing the prospect of jail time over an anti-migrant video.
The Tusk government will likely be emboldened by its performance in this month’s EU elections as it pushes for the liberalisation of abortion laws and the introduction of same-sex marriage in Poland.
The Chatham House Award is given to those deemed to have promoted international relations the most in the past 12 months. Previous recipients include Melinda Gates for her anti-poverty initiatives as well as Hillary Clinton in 2013 for improving women’s rights.