A bluffer, a fighter, at times unsettling – Karol Nawrocki managed to smooth out all the rough edges of his personality, which gradually emerged during the electoral campaign, without sustaining any damage. On Sunday, June 1, the 42-year-old historian, father of three and amateur boxer was elected president of Poland with 50.89% of the vote. Backed by the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) party, he narrowly beat Warsaw's liberal mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski.

The victory marked a comeback for PiS, which lost the parliamentary elections in October 2023, and a catastrophe for the center-right coalition led by former European Council president (2014-2019) Donald Tusk, which now faces the prospect of a far more contentious cohabitation than it had until now with the outgoing president, Andrezj Duda, a PiS ally.

"Nawrocki is a doctrinaire, he is ready, and he said it: His main mission will be to block the Tusk government, which means he does not understand the role of the president in this country, which is to be a conciliator," warned political scientist Wawrzyniec Konarski, rector of Vistula University, before the election.

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