Timmermans woos Poland’s rising star

WARSAW — Poland’s new Wiosna party is expected to win about six of the European Parliament’s 751 seats in this Sunday’s election — but that’s enough to make it a very tempting morsel.

Frans Timmermans, the Socialist nominee to be the next European Commission president, has taken the lead in battling the nationalist Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party government over accusations that it is violating the EU’s democratic rules.

That, however, didn’t stop him from spending some of the campaign’s final hours in the Polish capital to woo Wiosna’s leader — 43-year-old Robert Biedroń.

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The two toured Warsaw on Tuesday in a tram as Timmermans shouted enthusiastically “Spring is coming!” — a play on the party’s Polish name, which means “spring.”

Timmermans is scrambling for every possible vote following a shift in fortunes for the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), which is giving Socialists hope that they may squeeze out a victory against their rivals for the first time in decades.

Although the EPP is predicted to win 171 seats versus 144 for the Socialists, the actual outcome could be much narrower.

Thanks to internal squabbles within the EPP over the democratic credentials of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz, Viktor Orbán’s party may quit the center-right bloc, which would deprive it of about 12 seats.

If that happens, and if France’s Socialists manage to get more than 5 percent of the vote (they’re hovering near that level), then Wiosna’s MEPs might be enough for Timmermans to claim victory.

“Now, we are neck and neck with the EPP,” Timmermans told reporters after serving hot dogs to Wiosna supporters at a Warsaw bar. “So something might be working.”

On Wednesday, Timmermans said his Socialist group and Wiosna would be “allies” in the next Parliament. Officials at Wiosna say the party has not made any formal decision to join the Party of European Socialists, as Biedroń wants to wait for the election results.

But the mood music was very chummy.

“Timmermans is Wiosna,” Biedroń told POLITICO. “He speaks the Spring language. He has the same values, and a similar program.”

The Wiosna leader has been compared to French President Emmanuel Macron, who upended French politics two years ago, but Biedroń cut himself off from the liberals — who are also hunting for extra votes in the European Parliament.

“France has it own path. Macron is a liberal, and I am not,” said Biedroń.

An enemy of PiS

Although Timmermans is public enemy No. 1 for PiS, which accuses him of unfairly targeting Poland for its controversial reforms to the country’s judicial system, he’s widely praised by the liberal urban voters who form the core of Wiosna’s support.

Timmermans vociferously rejects accusations that he’s anti-Polish — in the past pointing out that his father’s Dutch home town had been liberated by Polish troops during the war.

Standing in front of Poland’s Supreme Court on Wednesday, Timmermans told reporters that he would “keep fighting” to make sure that “the justice system remains independent.”

“This country, sadly, sadly, has a long history before it freed itself of judges deciding on the basis of a phone call from party central,” he said. “We do not want to go back to that history.”

Timmermans insisted that he is a “great friend of Poland,” and that he has battled Warsaw in order to ensure that Poland is not isolated within the bloc by refusing to follow its democratic rules.

“I have seen over the last three years that whatever happens, whatever fight I may have with the Polish government, the Polish people is with Europe. You belong to Europe!” he told cheering Wiosna supporters.

The Socialist leader also dove into the widening sexual abuse scandal shaking Poland’s Roman Catholic Church in the wake of an unsparing documentary looking at the victims of priests and how the church hierarchy tried to cover up the problem.

Biedroń tweeted that while in Warsaw, Timmermans, a Catholic, said that he had been the victim of sexual assault by a priest — something the Socialist candidate has spoken about in the past.

That will likely buttress Wiosna’s program of enforcing a strict separation between church and state; much of the church is currently closely allied with PiS.

A new party

Wiosna is a small part of a broader political battle in Poland. The main players are PiS and the European Coalition, a grouping of five parties led by Civic Platform, the centrist party once headed by European Council President Donald Tusk.

POLITICO estimates that PiS will take 22 of Poland’s 51 seats, while the European Coalition will get 20 — 17 of which will go the EPP while three will go to the Socialists.

Wiosna has come under fire from the rest of the opposition for weakening the combined anti-PiS forces when Biedroń refused to join the coalition.

The European election is being treated as a prelude to Poland’s national elections this fall, with parties hoping that a good result this Sunday will boost their chances later in the year.