New Directions in Poland’s European Foreign Policy: Continuity or Change after the 2015 Elections?

After eight years of government by Civic Platform (seven under Prime Minister Donald Tusk), legislative elections in October 2015 produced a different governing coalition. This paper assesses the foreign policy legacy of the Tusk years, in particular, relations with Russia bookended by the 2008 Eastern Neighborhood Initiative launched by Poland and Sweden, and by the 2014 caesura of conflict in Ukraine. In Tusk’s last months as Polish leader Poland played the role of ‘frontline state’ spearheading Western condemnation of Kremlin actions. This paper examines whether such hostility, or more accurately suspicion and distrust of Russia (which can be called ‘russo-hypopsia’), continued to characterize the early foreign policy of the government formed after October 2015. The paper also evaluates the proposition that Moscow’s international behavior may today have less influence on shaping Polish foreign policy than what the international politics of Brussels – and Berlin – dictate.