WARSAW — A year before Poland's general election, the country's main opposition leader has suggested that countries led by nationalist parties could open negotiations to leave the European Union — not necessarily to walk out, but to pressure the bloc into returning powers to member states.

Source: Associated Press

"The European Union must be changed. This is my deep conviction, shared by my party and, I believe, very many Poles," Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the national-conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), said on Wednesday at the Krynica Forum, an economic forum in southern Poland. He argued that EU institutions such as the European Commission, the bloc's executive body, hold too much influence over national governments, and went further in other accounts of the speech, saying the Commission is harmful to the EU's future and should not exist, with the European Council of national leaders taking over its role.

Source: Associated Press

A three-stage pressure plan, with exit talks last

Kaczynski laid out an escalating sequence. First, reform-minded states would try to assemble a coalition inside the bloc to force treaty changes. If that failed, the states seeking revision could sign a separate treaty of their own, written the way they want it but with a delayed entry into force — in effect an alternative structure standing beside the EU. Only if that also failed would they turn to the exit procedure written into the EU treaties, the same Article 50 route Britain used to leave. "We have a clause in the EU treaty which determines the process of leaving the EU. It begins with a process of negotiation which could be started," he said, conceding it would be a hard and risky course, but arguing things inside the EU are now so bad it may be worth trying if other methods bring no results. Among his other ideas: national parliamentarians monitoring how often EU bodies themselves break EU law.

Source: Brussels Signal

He pointed to votes due in France and Spain, which he said could put far-right parties in power and open the way for talks on reshaping the union, and said the reform he wants is aimed at "improving citizens' living conditions, lowering energy prices, strengthening security, pursuing a responsible migration policy and an ambitious economic and agricultural policy without unnecessary bureaucracy."

Source: Associated Press

Tusk: that is starting negotiations to leave

The reaction from the government was immediate. "Jaroslaw Kaczynski has just announced that Poland should begin negotiations on the conditions of leaving the European Union," the pro-European prime minister, Donald Tusk, wrote on X. Kaczynski answered on the same platform that Tusk had misrepresented him: "We want the union to benefit not the elites, but the ordinary citizens." Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski also mocked the speech on X, listing what he said a Polish exit would bring — customs borders with Germany, Czechia, Slovakia and Lithuania, passport checks at airports, and an end to farm and investment subsidies — and said, in the AP account: "I thank Jaroslaw Kaczynski for his honesty," adding that the remarks should help voters understand the consequences of choosing the far-right. Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said the EU needs reform where it needs improvement, "not threats to leave," and noted Poland has received far more from Brussels — hundreds of billions of euros for roads, railways, rural development and defence — than it has paid in.

Source: Associated Press

Poland is a key country on NATO's eastern flank and one of the EU's fastest-growing economies, and it has gained strategic importance through its central role in supporting Ukraine. Kaczynski's party governed Poland from 2015 to 2023, a period marked by repeated clashes with EU institutions over judicial independence and human rights. Polls cited in the reporting indicate PiS could return to power at the next election if it allies with smaller far-right groups that have gained ground in recent years — which is why a speech about treaty mechanics landed, within hours, as the opening fight of the election campaign.

Source: Associated Press