Poland

Abstract

This chapter argues that although Poland appeared to be one of most overwhelmingly Europhile countries, Poles became increasingly instrumental in their approach towards EU membership. It shows that the first three Polish European Parliament (EP) elections did not conform to the second-order election thesis entirely; the 2004 poll did so the most, and the one in 2014 the least. The 2019 election was seen as the first stage of the country’s autumn first-order parliamentary campaign and there was a high turnout, the main governing party celebrated a stunning victory, fringe parties did not perform especially well and there was a great deal of media interest in the campaign. Moreover, in spite of the fact that the Soft Eurosceptic government had been in an ongoing conflict with the EU political establishment since 2015, Euroscepticism actually featured very little in the 2019 campaign.