Analysis: Europe — 06 November 2026
Nearly half of Poles want Tusk to resign after Constitutional Tribunal takeover
A poll for the weekly Wprost, published on 5 November, found that 47.4 per cent of Poles say Donald Tusk should no longer be prime minister after last week’s takeover of the Constitutional Tribunal, when riot police secured the building. 38.3 per cent wanted him to remain; 14.3 per cent had no opinion. A United Surveys/IBRiS voting-intention poll for Wirtualna Polska, fielded on 2 November, put Tusk’s Civic Coalition at 27.2 per cent, down 2.5 points. Combined with the Left, that would be 202 seats in the 460-member Sejm, short of the 231 needed for a majority. Bloomberg reported the same day that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen skipped a press conference with President Karol Nawrocki after a Visegrad presidential meeting in Trenčín, so as not to legitimise his position in the court fight.
Judges elected by the current Sejm majority moved to suspend Tribunal President Bogdan Święczkowski and his deputy. Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, whom Nawrocki has not sworn in, cut the quorum from ten to eight. Tusk presents the operation as restoring legitimacy after years of Law and Justice (PiS) influence and has accused opponents of Russian backing. Nawrocki’s chancellery filed complaints alleging an attack on a constitutional organ. Brussels backed Tusk, released previously frozen funds after 2023, and closed the Article 7 procedure in May 2024.
The Commission that treated PiS judicial changes as a rule-of-law breach is now rearranging a diplomatic programme to avoid Poland’s elected president. That contrast, not the 2015 case law, is what the opposition is using. Seat maths would require PiS, Confederation and Grzegorz Braun’s group to govern together; that alliance is unproven. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola is due in Warsaw for separate meetings with both men.
Sources: Remix News, Hungarian Conservative.
Fitch: French and Italian bond yields put eurozone governments under strain
Fitch Ratings told a London briefing on Wednesday that rising government bond yields are tightening the fiscal squeeze on European sovereigns, with France and Italy most exposed. French ten-year yields rose 141 basis points in the year to end-October, to 4.9 per cent, from 4.1 per cent at Fitch’s August review. Belgium was up 103 points, Italy 98, the United Kingdom 82. Fitch has already shifted France’s A+ outlook to negative. The French–German spread briefly reached 174 basis points, a gap the agency said was comparable to the early-2010s eurozone debt crisis. Fitch forecasts public debt at 119 per cent of GDP in France and 138 per cent in Italy by the end of 2026.
The agency stressed this is not a rerun of that crisis: it sees no overheating in the weakest markets, stronger bank buffers, and more tools to contain systemic stress. Long average debt maturities also delay the hit. Even so, average servicing costs keep rising, which makes deficit reduction harder. Fitch estimates a one-percentage-point yield increase would add interest costs equal to 0.2 per cent of GDP in the first year and 0.3 per cent in the second for both France and Italy.
The warning is that governments judged to be making too little progress on public finances could face abrupt further yield spikes. That sits alongside a separate monetary signal the same day: the Bank of England raised Bank Rate from 3.75 to 4 per cent, the first hike in three years, and said inflation could peak near 5 per cent by mid-2027, or 6 per cent if the Iran war keeps energy prices high.
Sources: Hungarian Conservative.