How immigration came to define the Polish elections

Poland is heading for a highly divisive and polarised election on October 15^th. The country’s right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which has ruled since 2015, is highly critical of the institutions and elites that emerged following the collapse of communism in 1989. And it has broken with the Polish foreign policy consensus pursued by previous governments, accusing them of aligning too closely with Berlin and failing to stand up for Poland’s interests within the EU. 

As a consequence, Law and Justice has come in for heavy criticism from both its domestic opponents and the EU political establishment for undermining democracy and the ‘rule of law’, particularly for its judicial reforms. It strongly rejects this, accusing its critics of politically-motivated double standards.  

For a long time Law and Justice retained high levels of popular support, and in 2019 it secured re-election with an unprecedented second outright parliamentary majority. This was because it largely delivered on its programme of large social welfare programmes aimed at less well-off Poles living outside of the urban centres who felt that they had not benefited sufficiently from Poland’s post-1989 economic transformation.