Kaczyński said that all Tusk cared for was "a European career," adding that Tusk's top position in the EU structures "depended on Germany."
Wojtek Jargiło/PAP

Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s deputy prime minister and leader of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, has accused opposition leader Donald Tusk of intentional weakening of Poland’s eastern border defence to win a top EU post.

Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and Kaczyński’s arch-enemy, was the European Council president between 2014 and 2019.

The conservative PiS has often accused Tusk’s centrist party, the Civic Platform (PO), of weakening Poland’s armed forces by shutting down military units, particularly in the east of the country.

PO had been in a coalition government with a small agrarian party for eight years, but was beaten by PiS in the 2015 elections.

“At the moment it’s worth considering for a while why our predecessors weakened this border,” Kaczyński said on Thursday in Kodeń, a town close to the Polish-Belarusian border. “I don’t think this was naivety. It was to meet the needs of Germany, which wanted to be in very good relations with Russia. And the policy of Donald Tusk was a policy of full subordination… also for personal reasons.”

Kaczyński went on to say that all Tusk cared for was “a European career,” adding that Tusk’s top position in the EU structures “depended on Germany.”

“And he was prepared to do everything, including doing an obvious harm to his own country in order to secure this post,” Kaczyński said.

Tension between the two political leaders has been running high for years but has escalated in recent weeks in the run-up to the autumn general election.