Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This week, the Dutch government collapsed after the far right
Speaker 2: lawmaker here At Wilders pulled his party out of the
Speaker 2: country's ruling coalition over migration policies. It's the latest development
Speaker 2: in a tumultuous few weeks in Europe, where right wing
Speaker 2: political parties have done well in recent elections. Over the weekend,
Speaker 2: a conservative nationalist backed by President Trump won Poland's presidential election.
Speaker 1: Pro Trump nationalist Carol Novrotsky over in Poland has won
Speaker 1: that country's presidential election in a campaign that has laid
Speaker 1: bare the political polarization within the country.
Speaker 2: D Karl Nevrotsky is an historian who's also a former boxer,
Speaker 2: and he defeated Warsaw's liberal mayor by a razor thin margin.
Speaker 2: The outcome of the election was a blow to Poland's
Speaker 2: centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk and also to pro Ruropean
Speaker 2: Union leaders across Europe. On Monday, Tuk said he'd call
Speaker 2: a confidence vote with the hope he'll be able to
Speaker 2: shore up support for his coalition government and his political agenda.
Speaker 3: Poland matters a lot more than people sometimes realize.
Speaker 2: Rodney Jefferson helps oversee Bloomberg's coverage of Europe, and he's
Speaker 2: been tracking the rise of nationalist and far right parties there.
Speaker 2: This year alone, Germany, Romania, and Portugal have all seen
Speaker 2: right wing parties game ground, and the outcome in Poland's
Speaker 2: presidential election continues the trend.
Speaker 3: Over the years. It's absorbed the huge amount of European
Speaker 3: Union money and it's at the moment it's the NATO's
Speaker 3: biggest spender on defense relative society, the economy, so Poland
Speaker 3: really matters. It's where you could argue that the European
Speaker 3: Union expansion project and all the things we talk about Europe,
Speaker 3: it's where it sort of lives and dies.
Speaker 2: I'm David Gura, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News today on the show, tracking the rise of
Speaker 2: the far right in Europe and what recent elections there
Speaker 2: tell us about the future of the European Union. The
Speaker 2: election between Karle Nevrotsky and Rafel Treskowsky was so close
Speaker 2: that at first Treskowsky thought he'd won, and he declared
Speaker 2: victory a few hours later. Nevrotzky had secured fifty point
Speaker 2: nine percent of the vote and Trevskovsky conceded. In Poland,
Speaker 2: the president has veto power over the prime minister's legislative agenda,
Speaker 2: and Bloomberg's Rodney Jefferson says life is going to remain
Speaker 2: difficult for the current Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, who's had
Speaker 2: a hard time advancing his agenda. Introduce us to the
Speaker 2: man who won this election, karen Nevrotsky. Who is he
Speaker 2: and what does he stand for?
Speaker 3: He is a political outsider. In fact, he has no
Speaker 3: practical experience on the front line at least. He's a
Speaker 3: quite colorful guy. Is a former boxing champion. He's from
Speaker 3: Gadanski is where Tusk's from. He's got PhD in history
Speaker 3: and he's written many books, ranging from the history of
Speaker 3: the solid Ouity movement that helped bring down Communism. He's
Speaker 3: also written a book involving the sort of criminal underworld
Speaker 3: and also about football. He's a passionate footballer as well.
Speaker 3: But he was handpicked as the Law and Justice the
Speaker 3: opposition party's manned for this election by the person that
Speaker 3: we've often referred to as the puppet master of Poland
Speaker 3: during the Law and Justice government, which is the alswav Kacinski,
Speaker 3: who's the leader of the party, the president of the party.
Speaker 2: Compare him, if you would, to his chief rival, that's
Speaker 2: Ralph Aul Troskowsky. How different are these two political figures.
Speaker 3: That's basically how Poland is split. So you have Rafau Schafskowski,
Speaker 3: who is the Warsaw mayor, who you might argue would
Speaker 3: be the classics sort of pro European, more liberal leader.
Speaker 3: It's not dissimilar to what you might see in London,
Speaker 3: for example, during Brexit, or indeed New York versus the
Speaker 3: rest of the US. He's more progressive on certain things
Speaker 3: such as gender issues and Poland's relationship with the European Union.
Speaker 3: Navrotsky represents law and justice. During the campaign he was
Speaker 3: bigging up his conservative Catholic values and background. And what
Speaker 3: is interesting with this election is Poland is divided. It's
Speaker 3: split down the middle. When Tusk came to power, the
Speaker 3: Prime Minister came to power in twenty twenty three, it
Speaker 3: was a huge mobilization of women and young people as well,
Speaker 3: particularly who had come out and said no, we've had
Speaker 3: enough of this. The standoff with the European Union, issues
Speaker 3: over abortion and women's rights, and some of the slurs
Speaker 3: against immigrants, and all these things, and they came out.
Speaker 3: It was like a mobilization and Tusk promised a lot.
Speaker 3: He struggled to deliver for reasons also within the coalition,
Speaker 3: not just because he's being blocked by a president who's
Speaker 3: not on his side. So this election really encapsulated that divide,
Speaker 3: and that's why you can see the country, how it's
Speaker 3: so cleaved down the middle. And it's this culture war.
Speaker 3: We call it. It's a bit of a lazy term,
Speaker 3: I know, but I'm going to use it. It's like
Speaker 3: this culture war that has emerged in Poland that we
Speaker 3: have now witnessed across Europe. In the States, we also
Speaker 3: seem to be sitting in the middle of one.
Speaker 2: Ronnie, you are based in Scotland, but you were in
Speaker 2: Poland in the run up to this election. Where did
Speaker 2: you go and what did you hear from voters there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was in Gadansk, which is where Solidarity Union
Speaker 3: was born. You could say it was the birthplace of
Speaker 3: Poland's modern Polish democracy. And then I was down in
Speaker 3: Warsaw working with my colleagues, and then I actually left
Speaker 3: from Posnan. And the thing that always astonishes me about
Speaker 3: Poland still is the transformation of the country is unbelievable,
Speaker 3: the railway system, the roads, the way that cities look,
Speaker 3: the money that's gone in there. I mean when we
Speaker 3: were writing about this a few years ago in the
Speaker 3: context of why is Poland suddenly having this big argument
Speaker 3: along with Hungary and long Slovakia with the European Union,
Speaker 3: is that on a per capita basis, nowhere in the
Speaker 3: EU absorbed more money. So the economy is doing really well,
Speaker 3: wages are up as well, but there's a certain level
Speaker 3: of division and anger. And one of the people I
Speaker 3: will just name drop if you like, is my colleague Natalia.
Speaker 3: He had a nice long chat with Alexander Kasniewski, who's
Speaker 3: a former president. He was the president from ninety five
Speaker 3: to two thousand and five, during which time Poland joined
Speaker 3: the EU join NATA, and he was saying that one
Speaker 3: of the issues here right now in Poland is that
Speaker 3: you have this huge mobilization of people that brought Donald
Speaker 3: Tusk back to power a sort of more liberal, pro
Speaker 3: European Poland, and yet he hasn't delivered in the way
Speaker 3: that they expected. Change hasn't come quickly enough for one
Speaker 3: cohorter of people, or it's not coming quickly enough on
Speaker 3: certain things like climate change and gender issues, and with
Speaker 3: those same issues things are going way too quickly for
Speaker 3: the other half of the bole.
Speaker 2: Ronnie put this election result in context. What does it
Speaker 2: mean for Central Europe and for Europe more broadly.
Speaker 3: It's a hammer blow because I mean we tend to
Speaker 3: forget the sort of recent period of these parties and
Speaker 3: the successes of conservative nationalism, Law and Justice, the party
Speaker 3: that supports Nevrotsky, and it's the bigger Poland who are
Speaker 3: trying to come back to power in Poland and the
Speaker 3: next parliamentary election in twenty twenty seven, for which this
Speaker 3: is key to that allied with Auborn in Hungary, right
Speaker 3: would fitso and Slovakia you could have Babbage coming back
Speaker 3: in the Czech Republic and it's almost like they want
Speaker 3: to try and get sort of like this band back together.
Speaker 3: And so it's hugely resonant for the region from that
Speaker 3: point of view, but also for Europe because a lot
Speaker 3: of these issues, whether we talk about immigration, cost of
Speaker 3: living crisis, what would do about Ukraine aid, these are
Speaker 3: issues that are showing up across Europe, and Poland elected
Speaker 3: a sort of conservative nationalist if you like Trumpian sort
Speaker 3: of government. Before Trump came to power, it came in
Speaker 3: October twenty fifteen. By the end of twenty sixteen, we
Speaker 3: had Donald Trump winning the White House and Britain had
Speaker 3: voted to leave the European Union. So just to look
Speaker 3: at Poland and to look at it as some sort
Speaker 3: of bell weather is quite important.
Speaker 2: We saw Carol Levrodsky go to Washington, he met with
Speaker 2: President Trump. What role did President Trump play in this election?
Speaker 2: What roles he playing more broadly in elevating some of
Speaker 2: these nationalists and for right candidates in Europe.
Speaker 3: You know, we're in the middle of a tariff led
Speaker 3: to trade war. Trump is trying to rewrite to security
Speaker 3: arrangements for Europe. Everyone's having to spend more on their
Speaker 3: own defense. There's a lot going on, and I think
Speaker 3: Trump's done two things. He's changed the sort of the
Speaker 3: calculus for Europe when it comes to trade, the economy,
Speaker 3: and also defense and security. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: the return of Trump to the White House is very
Speaker 3: much reinvigorated a lot of these parties.
Speaker 2: After the break, the issues that Europe's far right political
Speaker 2: parties and what a surgeon support means for European unity.
Speaker 2: If you look at Europe today, you'd be hard pressed
Speaker 2: to find a country where right wing populism has not
Speaker 2: gained ground. Outside of Poland, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland
Speaker 2: and Slovakia all have far right parties and power, and
Speaker 2: all over the continent the far right has gained traction.
Speaker 2: There are the far right parties and leaders that routinely
Speaker 2: make headlines. There's Germany's AfD or Alternative for Germany, and
Speaker 2: Portugal's Chega Francis Marine Leapenn, Britain's Nigel Faraj, Austria's Herbert Kickel.
Speaker 2: The list goes on. I asked Bloomberg's Rodney Jefferson if
Speaker 2: what we're seeing is the rise of something new.
Speaker 3: I'm no historian, but there's lots of comparisons you have
Speaker 3: on economics and things, people referring back to nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: and then they refer back to thirties and the different
Speaker 3: sort of political and cultural zeitgeist of e merged. I
Speaker 3: think in this case, the firewright never went away. I
Speaker 3: remember speaking to someone in Poland in twenty seventeen when
Speaker 3: there were quite some serious issues of Poland's relationship with
Speaker 3: Europe and also with the US, and you say, look,
Speaker 3: twenty percent of any country votes a certain way. I
Speaker 3: think what has happened more recently over the last ten years,
Speaker 3: certain issues have been turbocharged, and a lot of that
Speaker 3: is to do with the speed of change.
Speaker 2: Rodney says, what we're seeing stems from frustration with the economy,
Speaker 2: from major events like the global financial crisis, and from
Speaker 2: more migration. Then there were leaders like Hungary's Victor Orbonn
Speaker 2: who have had an outsized influence.
Speaker 3: Twenty fifteen was a very pivotal year. You know, Aubonn
Speaker 3: was in power, he'd come back in twenty ten. That
Speaker 3: year was the time when you had the Greek standoff
Speaker 3: as well with the Eurozone that went down to the wire,
Speaker 3: and then you had the refugee crisis, and you had
Speaker 3: huge numbers of refugees pouring in from Syrian civil war,
Speaker 3: pouring into Greece and then moving up north with Serbia.
Speaker 3: And it's these things that suddenly there's that feeling amongst
Speaker 3: a certain swathes of the population of being under threat,
Speaker 3: and it comes very easy then for these leaders to
Speaker 3: whip up a sort of identity politics. It also came
Speaker 3: at the time when the world was still sort of
Speaker 3: going through the post financial crisis, reckoning and all these
Speaker 3: sort of things aligned. And that's why you're sitting there
Speaker 3: when you have Donald Trump as president and I'm sitting
Speaker 3: in a country that left the European Union and various
Speaker 3: other things that happened.
Speaker 2: What role has Victor Orbon played in countries outside of
Speaker 2: Hungary advancing far right parties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Auburn's been very much sort of a dot to
Speaker 3: overstate him, but very much a ring leader. He's obviously
Speaker 3: supported the likes of Marine Le Penn. He's been very
Speaker 3: active in Poland, in fact that at one point Kachinski,
Speaker 3: the leader of Law and Justice, referred to trying to
Speaker 3: create a Buddapeste on the Viswa River to sort of
Speaker 3: replicate what Orbard had done with the unpicking of democratic institutions,
Speaker 3: changes to the judiciary in his favor and that sort of,
Speaker 3: you know, politicization of democracy to the point where he's
Speaker 3: going after the NGOs again, foreign funding of NGOs, which
Speaker 3: has been likened to Russia's attack on those freedoms and
Speaker 3: in Georgia and places. So he has become like this
Speaker 3: person that people look to as well look at Allbund's
Speaker 3: done in Hungary, and he's been very open about it. Right,
Speaker 3: he said very early on, I am building an illiberal
Speaker 3: democracy here. As far as he's concerned, he's on the
Speaker 3: right side of history.
Speaker 2: What role has the economy been playing on all of this.
Speaker 2: On the one hand, you've got Germany and its economy
Speaker 2: has been in this tough place. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: you've got Poland, which, as you noted a few minutes ago,
Speaker 2: has kind of been flushed with money.
Speaker 1: Was it?
Speaker 3: Carl Barks has said everything comes down to economics. It's
Speaker 3: all about what's in your pocket. I think that's clear.
Speaker 3: The cost of living crisis. People actually going back to Poland,
Speaker 3: people talk about that. The voters were saying, yeah, but
Speaker 3: things are so expensive, and I think everyone has felt
Speaker 3: that with the inflation post coronavirus. They different sort of
Speaker 3: how things have played out in the economy. I mean,
Speaker 3: having said that, Poland is still like I think it's
Speaker 3: one of the fastest growing economies still in the European Union.
Speaker 3: But it's how that growth, it's how people feel right
Speaker 3: and they see prices, and I think that's completely played
Speaker 3: into it. In the Polish election that just happened. Now
Speaker 3: we talk about the winner and avrot Ski versus Taskovski,
Speaker 3: the liberal mayor of Warsaw. One of the key elements
Speaker 3: here was the fact that the first round, the far
Speaker 3: right Confederazia candidate Mensin got almost fifteen percent of the vote,
Speaker 3: and those votes had to go somewhere. So actually the
Speaker 3: far right here is played that hidden hand. And one
Speaker 3: of the things that because he talks about taxes and
Speaker 3: cutting taxes and the cost of living as well as
Speaker 3: all the other things. I see it here with Nigel
Speaker 3: Faraje of the Reform Party talking about are we going
Speaker 3: to cut taxes, We're going to raise the thresholder which
Speaker 3: people start paying tax, putting more money into people's pockets.
Speaker 3: It is classic populism.
Speaker 2: Not to put too fine a point down about what
Speaker 2: you're saying, is you're seeing the far right pulling maybe
Speaker 2: more centrist or less far right leaning groups closer to
Speaker 2: the far right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think you could see that clearly again in
Speaker 3: Poland this election. Actually even before the election, when you've
Speaker 3: got tuss playing a hard line on immigration. You see
Speaker 3: that with Keir Starmer, he has this huge majority in
Speaker 3: the UK and yet he feels like he's having to
Speaker 3: respond to Paraje and the Reform UK Party and try
Speaker 3: and outflank them on immigration. And it's something we've seen
Speaker 3: as part of that phenomena over the last ten years
Speaker 3: is that politics has just been pulled. The response hasn't
Speaker 3: been to say, look, this is why immigration is good,
Speaker 3: or this is why it's good for the economy, or
Speaker 3: this is why we should tackle climate change and reinforce
Speaker 3: that message. It's been to actually move to the right
Speaker 3: to try and keep those votes.
Speaker 2: Rodney, From where you sit, editing coverage of many countries
Speaker 2: in Europe, are there places that stand out to you
Speaker 2: that maybe you're paying close attention to where far right
Speaker 2: parties could gain ground.
Speaker 3: What concerns me, or at least what I think we
Speaker 3: should keep an eye on, is the next electoral cycle. So,
Speaker 3: for example, there was a recent election in Portugal and
Speaker 3: I believe that the far right there place second, and
Speaker 3: that election story was framed as being the center held,
Speaker 3: but actually the election story was very much the fact
Speaker 3: there was a surgeon far right. So where does that go?
Speaker 3: You could say the same with Greece. Mitsotakis came back
Speaker 3: to Paris Prime Minister, the vote for the left series
Speaker 3: a party completely collapsed, and again the center held a
Speaker 3: center right leader of a country that was changing and
Speaker 3: very much pro European Union and just the kind of
Speaker 3: guy that Brussels likes to have in power.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, I think you had three
Speaker 3: far right parties that got into parliament. There was a
Speaker 3: big surge in the fire right and I know people
Speaker 3: who voted for the far right, so we're sick of this.
Speaker 3: Were Greek we want to be. Is that again that
Speaker 3: identity politics? And I think that's where we have to
Speaker 3: be careful. It's what is that storing up and where
Speaker 3: does that go?
Speaker 2: What does the outcome of this election Poland mean for
Speaker 2: the Prime Minister Donald Tusk because he looks at his agenda.
Speaker 2: What does it mean for policymakers in Brussels at European
Speaker 2: Union headquarters who are trying to figure out how this
Speaker 2: is going to affect their policies going forward.
Speaker 3: The biggest issue, very simply is that Tusk has to
Speaker 3: have legislation rubber stamped by a president who has basically
Speaker 3: been hand picked by his opponents, Yeah, to try and
Speaker 3: obstruct him so that they get back into power in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty seven, and for Brussels, for the European Union,
Speaker 3: it's about looking at how perhaps they can rally around Tusk.
Speaker 3: And I think that what Brussels and for European Union policy,
Speaker 3: what they have to do is they have to be
Speaker 3: very careful how they navigate this. You have to be
Speaker 3: careful what you wish for, and you're already seeing I
Speaker 3: think parts of the European Union look talk more and
Speaker 3: more about let's slow down here, Let's slow down on
Speaker 3: some of these policies, unchange on the climate that the
Speaker 3: farmer's protests and things like that. Let's just slow down
Speaker 3: a little bit here and take stock and I think
Speaker 3: you might you'll probably find that more of a theme.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Germ.
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