US Republicans slam EU ‘double standard’ over Polish election financing

BRUSSELS — U.S. Republican lawmakers are reproaching the European Commission for taking a hands-off approach to Poland’s presidential election despite what the Americans say is a bias in favor of establishment centrist candidate Rafał Trzaskowski.

Brian Mast, chair of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, wrote a letter, signed by other House members, to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to express “profound alarm over reported developments in Poland that may undermine the integrity of its democratic processes.”

Poles are heading to the polls on Sunday for the second round of the country’s presidential election. Liberal Warsaw Mayor Trzaskowski, supported by the Civic Platform party of Prime Minster Donald Tusk, is facing off against Karol Nawrocki, the right-winger supported by the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party.

The two are neck-and-neck in opinion polls and scrambling for any advantage.

The letter from Mast is part of a broader interest among Republicans in supporting right-wing populists in Europe. Vice President JD Vance has met with the far-right Alternative for Germany opposition party and has lambasted Romania’s courts for annulling that country’s presidential election after Russia was accused of interfering with the campaign.

Nawrocki recently visited Donald Trump in the Oval Office and reported back that the U.S. president told him: “You will win.”

PiS’s MAGA ties were also evident, with the party on Tuesday hosting CPAC, the U.S. conservative get-together.

At the conference, Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, called for Poles to elect Nawrocki.

“Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol if you make him the leader of this country,” she said.

Mast accused the Commission of having a “double standard” in election rules that could tilt the balance in favor of Trzaskowski.

The first complaint is a May 15 Polish media report about a political advertising campaign favoring Trzaskowski by an NGO, which the report and Mast linked to operatives from the U.S. Democratic Party.

NASK, Poland’s state body tasked with countering online disinformation, reported that paid Facebook campaigns, apparently funded from outside Poland, appear to have promoted Trzaskowski while discrediting Nawrocki and far-right candidate Sławomir Mentzen.

“NASK said its analyses could not conclusively determine the source of the funding for the Facebook campaign or who commissioned it. Analysts did not rule out the possibility of provocation and stated that resolving the case requires action by the country’s security services,” the Digital Affairs Ministry told POLITICO in an emailed response.

The case was reported to the Internal Security Agency and the National Electoral Office while Meta was asked to remove the ads, the ministry said. Meta claimed the ads’ runtime had expired by the time the issue was made public and that they were no longer accessible.

When Nawrocki raised the issue during a recent debate — accusing Trzaskowski of getting money from Germany and liberal financier George Soros — Trzaskowski denied any improper financing and threatened Nawrocki with a lawsuit.

PiS has filed a complaint over the financing issue to the prosecutor’s office.

Separately, Mast pointed to “reports of the Tusk government’s monthslong refusal to release tens of millions of dollars in public campaign funding that PiS is legally entitled to receive.”

That’s a reference to a fight over PiS’s campaign funds. The party had its funding cut after the country’s electoral commission found improper spending during the 2023 parliamentary election campaign. The ruling has made it harder for PiS to finance Nawrocki’s campaign.

That ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court, but the verdict came from a part of the court that the government, the electoral commission and the Court of Justice of the EU see as illegitimate because its judges were improperly appointed when PiS was in power.

The U.S. Republicans denounced the finance freeze in their letter, pointing to earlier decisions by the Commission to halt financing for Poland under the previous PiS government. Those decisions were related to Poland’s violations of the rule of law and its backsliding on the EU’s democratic principles when the party was in power from 2015 to 2023.

“Despite the European Commission’s vocal criticism and decision to withhold over $150 billion from Poland for alleged rule of law violations under the previous PiS government, it has remained conspicuously silent despite clear eviden[ce] of rule of law violations under Tusk’s administration,” the letter read.

Such “selective enforcement … suggests a double standard that could undermine the EU’s credibility as a guardian of democratic principles,” it continued.

A European Commission spokesperson said the EU’s executive “does not address electoral processes,” which is a matter for national authorities.

It does, however, stand for “free and fair elections” through existing and new instruments, such as the EU’s content moderation rulebook and the upcoming Democracy Shield, a special committee within the European Parliament to protect democracy.

The Commission also said it was engaging closely with the Polish authorities on their actions to restore the rule of law.

Wojciech Kość reported from Warsaw.