Polish President Karol Nawrocki has said Poland must remain “ready to defend its western border” with Germany, despite both countries being in the EU and NATO.
Both Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski criticised Nawrocki in response for fuelling “anti-European” sentiments.
Nawrocki, who is allied to the opposition Conservatives (PiS), was speaking at the commemoration of Poland’s 1918 Wielkopolska uprising against Germany. The uprising led to the region leaving Germany and becoming a part of Poland. A month earlier, Poland had regained its independence from Russia, Germany, and Austro-Hungary, which had partitioned the country in the eighteenth century.
In his December 27 address, President Nawrocki praised the people who had preserved their Polish identity throughout the years of partition and rose up against Germany in 1918. These Poles had given “us an example of how we can triumph” as a “national community open to the west but also one ready to defend the western border of the republic”.
Nawrocki said during the partition period, Poland was subject to “German imperialism” marked by efforts to “take away Polish culture and national heritage”. His people must continue to defend their national identity in order to ensure that “Poland remains Poland”, he said.
Poland regained more western territories from Germany as a result of the Second World War and as compensation for territories the USSR took from Poland in 1939, when both the Soviet Union and Germany invaded Poland.
The German Federal Republic accepted the new Polish borders as late as in 1990 as part and parcel of a deal which saw East and West Germany united.
The president’s reference to Poland’s readiness to defend its western frontier, however, sparked a political backlash with figures from the ruling centre-left coalition accusing Nawrocki of fuelling anti-European sentiment.
“President Nawrocki once again pointed to the West as the main threat to Poland,” Tusk posted on social media. “This is the essence of the conflict between the anti-European bloc and our coalition, a deadly serious dispute about our values, security, and sovereignty: East or West,” he continued.
Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski also responded to Nawrocki’s remarks, saying as long as Germany remains a NATO and EU member led by Christian Democrats or Social Democrats, the threat to Poland’s western border is “nonexistent”.
He admitted, though, future shifts in German politics could pose new challenges.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Germany’s main opposition, has at times employed rhetoric hostile to Poland. One of its politicians has suggested Poland is as much of a threat to Germany as Russia.
The opposition PiS has always been wary of Germany. It presents Germany as a threat to Poland’s sovereignty in a European Union, which the party believes is dominated by German interests.
During PiS’s period in government between 2015 and 2023, Poland and Germany clashed over migration, energy, climate policies, the pace of EU integration and Polish claims for Second World War reparations.
Tusk, on the other hand, has been a consistent ally of Germany and the cause of deeper European integration.
In the autumn 2025, the PiS was active in the Border Movement, which instigated citizen patrols on the Polish-German border to combat alleged German push-backs of illegal migrants into Poland.
The Tusk administration did reintroduce border checks in 2024, in response to Germany’s introduction of border controls. But it said the situation on Poland’s western frontier is under control, unlike Poland’s border with Belarus where a barrier has been built to halt illegal migration.
