Since his return to Polish politics in the summer of 2021, Donald Tusk has increasingly told stories intended to engage his immediate circle by asking if his health is sound. Misrepresentations, half truths, and an uptick in blatant falsehoods punctuate his public speeches. He often frames decisions from his time as Prime Minister and later as President of the European Council as if they served Poland’s interests in ways that, in reality, did not align with the facts on the ground. He also attempts to cast himself as a central actor in Poland’s shift away from dependence on Russian energy, despite substantial public information pointing to a different reality.
What would Tusk have offered the Norwegians?
In a speech to voters in Sosnowiec, Tusk asserted that he was the first in Poland to propose a job for the Norwegians on the Baltic Pipe project. This claim is contested, and it ignores the fact that the Baltic Pipe project faced roadblocks under his own governance beginning in 2008. Work was restarted later under Jarosław Kaczyński’s government and had its earlier pause halted during the administration of Leszek Miller. It is hard to accept that a leader who has long supported a policy leaning toward Germany and Russia would now seek to claim credit for a decision that involved reducing reliance on Russian energy, specifically natural gas. Moreover, in 2001 the Baltic Pipe negotiations were led by the AWS government under Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, which agreed to have Norwegians build a pipeline along the Baltic seabed to Niechorze. The subsequent government of Leszek Miller overturned that arrangement in 2003 with its own position on gas supplies. It is notable that Norway, recognizing its own greater gas discoveries and seeking stable buyers, was prepared to fund much of the pipeline’s construction itself.
Tusk and Gazprom
The first Law and Justice government negotiated the deal with Gazprom in 2006-2007, but in 2008 that arrangement was altered by Tusk’s government, which considered gas deliveries to Russia under a contract slated to run until 2037. After a heated debate in the Sejm in 2010 and with intervention from the European Commission, the Tusk administration ultimately signed a gas contract with Gazprom, shortening its term to end in 2022. Following the 2015 elections, the United Right government resumed negotiations and for a substantial period convinced the Norwegians and Danes to proceed with the Baltic Pipe project. Construction began in 2018 and, despite environmental concerns and delays in Denmark, the pipeline was completed in the summer of 2022 and opened at the end of September at partial capacity due to Danish delays. Today the Baltic Pipe gas line operates at full capacity, complemented by the expansion of the Świnoujście gas terminal and the gas interconnectors with Lithuania and Slovakia, all contributing to Poland’s reduced dependence on Russian gas. Tusk, by contrast, supported policies that kept Poland tethered to Russia for oil and gas, even when proposals existed that would have freed the country from that dependence, or delayed them, as in the case of the Świnoujście terminal, whose project only gained momentum in the spring of 2011 after a longer standstill dating back to 2008.