Leaked audio shows Tusk weighed in on Polish election while European Council president

A private phone call recorded in 2019 has thrust Donald Tusk's tenure as president of the European Council into fresh controversy. The audio, published on Tuesday by the right-wing broadcaster TV Republika, captures Tusk discussing candidate selections for his Civic Coalition party ahead of Poland's parliamentary election that autumn, at a time when his Brussels post required strict political neutrality.

What the recording reveals

The conversation is between Tusk and Roman Giertych, then Tusk's personal lawyer and now a Civic Coalition member of parliament. Giertych complains that Grzegorz Schetyna, the party's leader at the time, was blocking his bid for a Senate seat by offering him only unwinnable districts. Tusk sympathises, calling it a mistake not to let Giertych run in Warsaw. When Giertych warns that the parliamentary campaign is heading "in the wrong direction" and that he would become the "face of defeat", Tusk replies that he "would not forget that."

Giertych also suggests promoting Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska. Tusk responds that it is a "very good idea." Kidawa-Błońska duly became the party's candidate for prime minister in the 2019 election, which Civic Coalition lost to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party. Schetyna did not seek re-election as party leader in 2020.

The neutrality requirement for EU institution heads

The president of the European Council is tasked with chairing summits of EU heads of state or government, driving the Union's strategic agenda and representing the bloc externally. The role is explicitly non-partisan. Article 15 of the Treaty on European Union states that the president "shall not hold a national office" and the appointment is made by a qualified majority of the European Council for a once-renewable term of two and a half years. Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, resigned that office in 2014 to take the Brussels post, serving until 2019.

The recording suggests Tusk remained actively engaged in domestic party strategy while holding the EU's top institutional chair. PiS-affiliated media argue this constitutes a breach of the neutrality the treaties demand. Civic Coalition politicians counter that the conversation was private, informal and that Tusk was no longer a member of the Polish government. The European Council has not responded to requests for comment.

Pegasus allegations resurface

The provenance of the leak is itself the subject of a criminal investigation. Giertych wrote on X that the conversation was recorded "as part of an illegal operation" through Israel's Pegasus spyware, which the previous PiS-led government allegedly deployed against political opponents. He listed a chain of alleged offences: recording lawyer-client conversations, failing to destroy them, removing copies from the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, transferring them to media and publishing them. "Those guilty of all these crimes will be punished," he wrote.

The current coalition government, led by Tusk since December 2023, has launched a probe into whether PiS officials misused Pegasus software. A parliamentary committee is also examining the surveillance allegations. The Israeli firm NSO Group, which sells Pegasus, licenses it only to state agencies, meaning any deployment in Poland would have required government authorisation.

Political context: a long-running feud

The leak arrives amid a bitter struggle over the rule of law in Poland. Between 2015 and 2023, PiS reshaped the judiciary, public media and oversight bodies, drawing repeated condemnation from the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. The Commission froze billions in cohesion funds and recovery grants until judicial independence was restored. Tusk's return to power in 2023 was framed explicitly as a mission to reverse those changes and repair relations with Brussels.

PiS, now in opposition, portrays the recording as evidence that Tusk never truly left domestic politics, undermining his credibility as a defender of European norms. Civic Coalition frames the leak as fruit of a poisoned tree: illegal surveillance by an authoritarian-leaning government, now weaponised to distract from its own record. Both narratives have domestic audiences; the European dimension is harder to parse.

Legal and institutional implications

If the European Council president was advising a national party on candidate lists, the question is whether that constitutes a breach of the treaty obligation to "neither seek nor take instructions from any government or other institution, body, office or entity", a duty owed by all EU institution members under Article 17 TEU. The European Council president is not a commissioner, but the principle of institutional independence applies. No formal complaint has been lodged with the European Parliament or the Court of Justice.

The Pegasus strand raises separate issues. The European Parliament's Pegasus committee, which reported in 2023, found that several member states, including Poland under PiS, had likely used the spyware against journalists, lawyers and opposition politicians. The Polish investigation could produce evidence admissible in national courts and potentially in proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights. It may also inform the Commission's ongoing rule-of-law reporting.

What happens next

Three tracks are moving in parallel. The parliamentary committee on Pegasus resumes hearings in September, with Giertych expected to testify. The prosecutor's investigation into illegal surveillance will determine whether charges follow against former PiS ministers or intelligence officials. And the European Commission's next rule-of-law report, due in July, will assess whether Tusk's government has met the milestones to unlock the remaining frozen funds, a test that now carries an extra layer of political noise. Tusk himself has not commented on the recording. His silence may be tactical; it may also reflect legal advice. Either way, the next concrete marker is the committee session in Warsaw on 9 September.