Rafał Trzaskowski: Warsaw mayor with foreign policy experience

Pro-EU presidential candidate Rafał Trzaskowski, a close ally of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, is a political scientist and one of the most prominent intellectuals in Poland’s liberal-conservative camp.

The 53-year-old with the fashionable three-day stubble only just missed election in 2020, when he came in behind outgoing right-wing President Andrzej Duda.

Warsaw Mayor Trzaskowski studied in Paris and Oxford and speaks English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian in addition to his native Polish.

During Tusk’s first term in office, he was appointed minister for administration and digitalization in 2013, going on to become deputy foreign minister.

Trzaskowski has been mayor of the capital since 2018, sweeping to victory in the first round on re-election last year.

While he has modernized Warsaw by extending public transport and investing in culture, he has also drawn criticism for wasting public funds. Construction of a lavatory in a park cost €150,000 ($170,000) – an amount that would buy a home in rural Poland.

Trzaskowski is internationally experienced, intelligent, handsome and mediagenic, but evident membership of the cosmopolitan elite makes few friends among the country’s small farmers.

In Tusk’s ruling liberal-conservative coalition, the father of two is seen as on the left due to support of LGBT rights, his regular appearance at Pride Parades and his removal of crucifixes from Warsaw administrative offices.

In strongly Catholic rural Poland, he is seen as abandoning traditional values.