Right-wing conservative historian and euroskeptic Karol Nawrocki has won the Polish presidential runoff by a whisker. The result is a bitter blow for Donald Tusk’s pro-European government.

Poland’s State Election Commission announced on Monday morning that the right-wing conservative historian and euroskeptic Karol Nawrocki had received 50.89% of the vote in Sunday’s presidential runoff, putting him marginally ahead of his liberal-conservative, pro-European rival, Rafal Trzaskowski, on 49.11%.

Nawrocki will be inaugurated in August, succeeding President Andrzej Duda, who, after two terms in office, was no longer able to run for president.

Nawrocki, a 42-year-old historian from Gdansk, was nominated by the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party. PiS presented Nawrocki as a non-partisan, independent “citizens’ candidate” although his campaign was paid for and organized by the party and his program aligned with that of PiS.

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