Tusk a quiet, unassuming, firm and politically ruthless leader

The elevation of Donald Tusk to one of the top jobs in Europe marks a coming of age for his native Poland. Ten years after joining the EU, it has secured the presidency of the European Council and the prime minister has become the fixer for, and mediator between, Angela Merkel, François Hollande, Matteo Renzi, David Cameron and other European leaders.

Tusk has already won the prestigious Charlemagne prize for leadership. The incumbent, Herman Van Rompuy of Belgium, described Tusk on Saturday as a "European statesman".

Quiet, unassuming, firm and politically ruthless, the German-speaking centre-right liberal from Gdansk, the cradle of Poland’s anti-communist, anti-Russian revolution, has been one of the EU’s most successful and most pro-European prime ministers of recent years at a time when faith in the EU has been tested.

The only Polish prime minister to win a second term since the collapse of communism in 1989, he has had a good crisis. Poland was the only EU country not to fall into recession as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, and the ensuing European debt and currency turmoil.

Perhaps more importantly, under Tusk’s seven years in charge of Poland and with the help of his Anglophile foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, the country performed a strategic shift, redefining the country’s national interest.

Hostile to Russia

Coming into the EU, Poland was a natural ally of Britain: big enough, on the fringes, liberal, free market and, for historical reasons, wary of the Franco-German dominion that ran the EU until the 2004 enlargement. Tusk inherited a Poland that was hostile to Russia and intensely suspicious of Germany, for good historical reasons.

The alliance with the UK was reinforced by Britain’s championing of Poland’s membership against deep-seated west European reservations and by the UK’s open-door policy for Polish migrants from 2004 when most others restricted immigration.

Under Tusk and Sikorski, this has all changed. The keen pro-Americanism waned, leaving a sour taste. Tusk and Sikorski concluded that Britain and Cameron in particular were making a mess of their tactics and strategy in Europe and with other EU governments.

Tusk bonded with Merkel, cemented a close Polish-German alliance, and concluded that Poland’s destiny rested on its closest possible European integration, setting it at odds with a UK travelling in the opposite direction.

What impact such policies and strategies will have on his stewardship of EU summits is not clear. By definition, the president of the European council is at the mercy of the other leaders. But the agenda-setting and mediation powers that go with the job also allow him to shape to a degree the EU’s direction.

–(Guardian service)