Karol Nawrocki, Poland’s newly elected president, is expected to block Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-EU reform agenda and offer fresh impetus to rightwing populists across the continent.

In a narrow run-off victory on Sunday, Nawrocki — a historian and political newcomer representing the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party — defeated Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate backed by Tusk’s centre-right Civic Coalition, with a vote margin of less than 2 per cent.

Nawrocki’s win is likely to exacerbate tensions between the presidency and government, scuppering a judicial overhaul that Tusk had pledged in 2023 in return for Brussels releasing billions of EU funds that were frozen during a rule of law dispute with the previous PiS government.

Nawrocki, an amateur boxer and self-confessed football hooligan from Gdańsk who has never held elected office, is expected to be more combative than outgoing President Andrzej Duda, another PiS nominee who frequently used his veto rights to block Tusk’s bills.

“He will be much worse for Tusk than Duda,” said Adam Leszczyński, director of the Gabriel Narutowicz Institute of Political Thought, a government-affiliated think-tank.

“He is much more extreme in his views and he is coming into this presidency with a lot of resentment, after really getting a very personal beating from Tusk and his allies during the campaign.”

Nawrocki’s win is a big defeat for Tusk, whose own return to power less than two years ago was hailed by many as a breakthrough that would restore Warsaw’s standing in the EU at a time when Russia was waging the largest armed conflict on European soil since the second world war.

But the presidential race has revealed how Tusk’s premiership has failed to paper over divisions in a highly polarised society, as radical candidates on both ends of the political spectrum fared better than expected in the first round, endorsed in particular by younger voters.

The Polish vote was also a rare victory for the Maga movement abroad, after rightwing politicians emulating US President Donald Trump were defeated in elections in Canada, Australia and most recently Romania. It came before other key votes in central Europe, with Eurosceptic billionaire Andrej Babiš hoping to return as Czech prime minister this autumn, as well as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Europe’s longest-serving prime minister, who is both a Trump and Russia ally and is seeking re-election next year.

“You now have inside the EU another leader determined to sabotage many things,” said Leszczyński. “Nawrocki shares Orbán’s mindset, but with more aggression and less [negotiation] skills.”

While Nawrocki had only briefly met Trump in the run-up to the election, some of the US president’s top officials were dispatched to Poland for a Conservative Political Action Conference there last week.

US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem endorsed Nawrocki at that conference, calling on Poles to “elect the right leader” and describing his rival Trzaskowski as “an absolute train wreck”.

“You will be the leaders that will turn Europe back to conservative values,” Noem said.

Sunday’s result is also a personal victory for Jarosław Kaczyński, the 75-year-old PiS founder and long-standing Tusk nemesis who handpicked Nawrocki, 42, a relatively unknown figure who led Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance.

Nawrocki is set to provide “a more radical and uncompromising presidency than Duda’s, possibly leading to an even more far-right government . . . than PiS ever was”, said Piotr Buras, head of the Warsaw bureau of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Sunday’s result showed that “the far-right, anti-EU, pro-Trump forces are stickier and more entrenched than many observers assumed”, said Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University.

“The fight pitting liberal internationalists against pro-Trump, pro-Orbán populists is being joined, and Poland is one of the more important battlegrounds in what is likely a generational struggle within the world’s leading democracies.”

Nawrocki’s campaign gained momentum after he sealed a pact with Sławomir Mentzen of the far-right Confederation party, who won nearly 15 per cent of votes in the first round. Their agreement included pledges to oppose tax increases and protect gun ownership rights — priorities designed to appeal to Confederation’s libertarian base.

Nawrocki’s victory came despite fierce criticism for a series of personal scandals and alleged ties to criminals — accusations he denied. Kaczyński said on Sunday that his candidate had successfully navigated “a Niagara of lies”.

By contrast, Trzaskowski, a former government minister and member of the European parliament, was seen as an experienced candidate who had only narrowly lost to Duda in the presidential election in 2020.

But Trzaskowski struggled to escape Tusk’s shadow, particularly over his government’s failure to enact promised reforms, including reversing a near-total ban on abortion that was introduced under PiS and maintained in part because of disagreements within Tusk’s coalition, which includes some socially conservative lawmakers.

Tusk acknowledged his government’s shortcomings and issued a rare apology in the final mass rally in Warsaw a week before the run-off — a gesture analysts say came too late.

Opinion polls had shown Trzaskowski in the lead throughout the campaign, but Nawrocki caught up with his rival, narrowing the gap to just two percentage points in the first round. Sunday’s upset victory is set to embolden voices within PiS pushing for early parliamentary elections and could create fresh tensions within Tusk’s unwieldy ruling coalition.

Before the run-off, Tusk ruled out snap elections. But Dorota Piontek, a political scientist at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, said there would now probably be “a play for early elections and the takeover of power by PiS and Confederation, which means a conflict with the EU and a weakening of Poland’s position”.

HICKORY, N.C. — Gunfire erupted around a house party in western North Carolina early Sunday and one person was killed and 11 others were hurt, some with gunshot wounds and others with injuries from fleeing the shooting in a usually quiet residential neighborhood, sheriff’s deputies said.

Authorities said at least 80 shots were fired in the shooting that began at about 12:45 a.m. People reported running, ducking for cover and scrambling to their cars for safety. Hours later Sunday, law enforcement had made no arrests and was seeking tips from the public in the case.

A statement from the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office said a 58-year-old man, Shawn Patrick Hood, of Lenoir, was killed, the oldest of the victims who ranged in age from as young as 16. It said seven of the injured remained hospitalized late Sunday, though updates on their conditions were not immediately released. One of the victims was previously reported in critical condition.

Authorities believe there was more than one shooter, a sheriff’s spokesperson said. The agency said it was asking for people who attended the party to contact the office.

Sheriff’s office Maj. Aaron Turk aid at a news conference that the shooting occurred in a normally quiet neighbhoord in southwest Catawba County about 7 miles (11 kilometers) south of the city of Hickory.

He said that about two hours before the shooting, someone in another home complained about noise from the party. He added that deputies responded but that investigators don’t believe the noise complaint was the motivation for the shooting.

Turk said the crime scene spanned several properties along a neighborhood road, covering about two acres (0.8 hectares), and included outdoor and indoor areas.

The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the Hickory Police Department are investigating the shooting. The FBI is also assisting in the case with a specialized evidence response team, officials said.