Grzegorz Schetyna – surprise replacement

Grzegorz Schetyna told journalists on 10 September: “This is a bad moment to change Poland’s foreign minister.” Less than two weeks later, he took over the position from Radek Sikorski, who had held the job since 2007.

The crisis in Ukraine was just one reason why Schetyna’s return to government – part of a cabinet reshuffle following on 30 August Donald Tusk’s appointment as the next president of European Council – was a surprise. Schetyna had found himself increasingly marginalised by Tusk and he was not an obvious choice as foreign minister.

He was chairman of the Polish parliament’s foreign-affairs committee in 2011-14, but his office, known as “the cave”, had more of a reputation for political than diplomatic discussions. Schetyna lacks the international profile – and polished English – of Sikorski, his predecessor, who has since become speaker of parliament. Even his mother was unable to hide her surprise at the decision taken by Tusk’s successor as prime minister, Ewa Kopacz. “I don’t know what prompted Mrs Kopacz to give him that post,” Danuta Schetyna told Gazeta Wyborcza. “I hope I find out soon.”

Schetyna’s appointment has less to do with his diplomatic prowess than with party calculations in Warsaw. Faced with parliamentary elections in 2015, Kopacz has reached out to the factions in her ruling centre-right Civic Platform, including one grouped around Schetyna. “Ewa Kopacz had two options: to kill Schetyna or pull him into the government,” an unnamed Civic Platform politician told Wprost, a Polish weekly.

Schetyna has political experience and contacts reaching back more than two decades. In the late 1980s, he headed Wrocław University’s branch of the Independent Students’ Union, the student arm of the Solidarność (Solidarity) trade-union movement, before holding a series of posts in the Liberal-Democratic Congress and then the Freedom Union party in the 1990s, along with Tusk and several other key figures in Polish politics. When Tusk co-founded Civic Platform in 2001, Schetyna became secretary-general, eventually becoming its first deputy-leader in 2010-13.

From the start, Schetyna’s career has been linked to Lower Silesia, in south-western Poland, where he went to university (he was born in the city of Opole, which is in a neighbouring region). His activity in the region was not restricted to politics: in the early 1990s, he co-founded a commercial broadcaster, Radio Eska, and chaired the Slask Wrocław basketball team in 1994-97. He may have been defeated as Civic Platform’s leader in Lower Silesia last year, but he remains influential in the region.

When Civic Platform came to power in 2007, Schetyna became minister of the interior and administration, as well as deputy prime minister. His time at the ministry has been eternalised in the term “schetynówki”, which refers to the many local roads built or upgraded as part of a government programme in 2008-11. After that, he spent a year as speaker of parliament. But by the time Civic Platform was re-elected in 2011, relations between Tusk and Schetyna had soured, as Schetyna did not hide his leadership ambitions. Schetyna found himself increasingly marginalised by Tusk, whose right-hand man and confidant he had once been.

Over the years, Schetyna had built up a circle of supporters in Civic Platform, united more by the belief that he would make the best leader of the party than by a clear set of views, according to Wojciech Szacki, an analyst at Polityka Insight, a think-tank in Warsaw. This makes it difficult to speak of “Schetynism” as a distinct ideological current in the party, he writes.

Despite such ambition, Schetyna claims that outside the office he tries to leave politics behind. Even as his relations with Tusk cooled, the two top figures in Civic Platform continued to play football together. Home matters to Schetyna: in the 1980s, he and his future wife (they now have a grown-up daughter) worked odd jobs in Canada, but ended up returning to Poland – reportedly because Schetyna missed it.

Although he was seen as one of the main challengers to Tusk, he decided not to run in the party’s leadership elections in summer 2013, which Tusk won with almost 80% of the vote. In December 2013, he lost his place on the party executive. Earlier this year, there was some speculation that he would be encouraged to stand for the European Parliament, to get him out of Warsaw.

This bad streak makes Schetyna’s return to government even more unexpected. He initially called for a leadership election within Civic Platform to choose Tusk’s successor as party leader, but now seems content to leave that role to Kopacz – at least for the time being.

For Schetyna, a man gifted with a Hollywood smile, the post of foreign minister offers him a chance to return to the political limelight. He is taking his new job very seriously, emphasises Paweł Swieboda, head of demosEuropa, a Warsaw-based think-tank. “He knows that it will be a test for his political ambitions,” he says, adding that Schetyna could prove a success as foreign minister.

His first weeks in office suggest continuity rather than change on key issues of foreign policy, says Marcin Zaborowski, head of the Polish Institute of International Affairs. Schetyna has emphasised Poland’s continued support for Ukraine and said last week that sanctions against Russia could be toughened if Russia does not change its policy.

Yet Schetyna himself has hinted that he will try to “introduce corrections, perhaps my own symbolic gestures” as foreign minister. Already, a shift in emphasis can be observed, says Swieboda, pointing to the new foreign minister’s rapprochement with France and Germany (his first visits were to Paris and Berlin). This may be an attempt to smooth over earlier differences in the Polish and German responses to the crisis in Ukraine and to present a “common front” on the matter.

When Schetyna took charge of the foreign ministry, Wprost pictured him on its cover seated on the marble throne of the Lincoln memorial in Washington, DC, with the caption “The winner”. That may seem premature, but it reflects a feeling shared by many in Warsaw that, as Civic Platform braces itself for many testing months ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections, Schetyna could have the last laugh.