Tusk seen gathering ‘overwhelming support’ for top European Union job

“Donald Tusk will be it (the president)”, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told the state television m1 in Brussels.

Last week the Polish government proposed another Pole, a member of the European Parliament, to replace Tusk.

On Thursday, Tusk was reelected as the president of the European Council despite Poland’s determination to postpone the vote.

“Why don’t we respect each other, listen to each other?” “She was a different person today”, one diplomat said.

“Protectionist tendencies are re-appearing”, the leaders will say, according to the draft obtained by Bloomberg News. “We can not hide that this country is Germany”, said Mr Kaczynski, who regularly rails against Berlin’s domination of Europe. “Nothing without us, without our consent”, she said upon arrival for the summit.

Tusk received the backing of 27 member states – notably not his own.

“Poland will defend the founding principles of the European Union until the end”, Szydlo added.

Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said Poland would “do everything” to prevent a vote on the matter.

But Mr Orban abandoned Poland to back Mr Tusk, former leader of Poland’s Civic Platform (PO) and a sister party to Hungary’s ruling Fidesz in the European People’s Party.

Faced with Poland’s block, the summit conclusions will instead be released as a national communique by Malta, which holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, officials said.

Poland will not agree to financial blackmail or a multi-speed Europe, the Polish Prime Minister said after informal talks between 27 European Union countries on Friday.

“The reform of the European Union is a fundamental matter for Poland”, she said, “but the EU’s future lies in unity”.

“I don’t think yesterday will be the long-term state of the EU”. I want leaders to reconfirm the European perspective for the Western Balkans.

That personal enmity, fed by a heated domestic political debate in Poland, saw the Warsaw government alienate even its closest allies like Hungary and Slovakia.

Tusk said he would communicate with the Polish government in Polish.

But EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker conceded the bloc could be “seen as introducing a new dividing line, a new kind of Iron Curtain between East and West”.

Most of the 28 leaders who gathered on Thursday night – Britain still being present then – had hoped to push through Tusk’s re-election with a minimum of fuss so they could concentrate on the bloc’s future.