Poland's two main competitors on Sunday locked the corner on Europe and traded individual barbs this week as they each secured the final bid to support floating voters.

The winner will take over as current President Andrzej Duda, the nationalist conservative law and justice party, and cooperation between the government and the president is crucial to pushing reforms at a critical moment in the fight against Russia by neighboring Ukraine.

At Tuesday's rally, Rafal Trzaskowski, who dominated the right-wing citizen platform of the center, stood on a platform in Krakow Central Market Square, cheering his name among the crowd, with blue European flags fluttering beside white and red Poland.

"I think honesty is the most important thing, human decency is the most important thing, and selflessness is the most important thing," Trzaskowski said.

Nawrocki allegedly bought an apartment belonging to an elderly man in Gdansk in exchange for a commitment to provide him with care. The promise was not fulfilled, according to the man's family, and he was placed in a state nursing home.

In response, Nawrocki said he would donate the apartment to the charity, noting that the family was expelled from the state accommodation in Warsaw under the mayor of Trzaskowski.

Nawrocki took a different tone at Zabrze’s rally - and featured special guests. On May 4, George Simion, the super-large champion of Romania's first round of presidential elections, and Nawrocki targeted the EU.

"With Romania, when George Simion wins, when we win on May 18, we will build a European homeland and we will not allow the EU to concentrate and turn Poland and Romania into its provinces," Navoroki said.

Simion chanted "Donald Trump!" with the crowd and called the U.S. president "a symbol of the struggle for freedom to change the entire Europe." Earlier this month, Nawrocki believed that Poland should focus on a coalition with the United States rather than the European Union, meeting with Trump at the White House and allegedly received his support.

Embrace anti-immigrant rhetoric - Four aspects

In the competition for floating ballots, both candidates relaxed in some of their traditional positions. Nawrocki abandoned the commitment of law and justice to the welfare state in exchange for a message of liberalism in free markets.

For his part, the more liberal Trzaskowski has been relatively quiet about women and LGBTQ rights and has made greater efforts to security and immigration by promising to cut benefits for unemployed Ukrainians who escaped from the war with Russia, and endorsing the government's suspension of political immigrant soldiers, putting them in prejudice situations to make them increasingly immigrate.

Security and anti-immigration rhetoric have been a key feature of the election, as both main candidates are closer to the views of populist Slawomir Mentzen, the leader of the tax consultant turned super garrison, conservative Federalist Party. He called on immigrants passing from Belarus to be fired, oppose Ukrainian welfare payments, and could rank third in the presidential campaign.

"In public opinion, among all voters, including New Left voters, there is a clear anti-Ukrainian trend that has social and economic rather than cultural roots," Bartosz Rydlinski said.

"The Poles are not angry that Ukrainians live separately or speak Polish. (But) there is an irrational sense of injustice in a country with highly limited public services. There is a feeling that Ukrainians do not work, but use health care. It is nonsense because most Ukrainians work and pay taxes."

“I want to live in a normal country”

At the meeting of the Krakow in the ocean of Polish and European flags, people gathered values-based politics and change.

"I want to live in a normal country and I want my daughter to grow up in a normal country, in a country with positive attitudes and no negative emotions. Poland deserves to be developed and respected in the world, which is why I'm here today.

When asked about the situation on the Polish-Beralus border – thousands of immigrants have crossed Europe since 2021 – with the suspension of asylum, Szol, like her candidate, agreed that the move was justified.

"This is an action by Putin's and Lukashenko to send poor people on the border who don't know what happened. Trafficking people are often involved. It's a NATO border, and it's just an extra security," Szol said.

However, Rydlinski said that such a moratorium on human rights would timid the far-right agenda in the long run and weaken liberal parties.

“The difference between liberals and populist parties should be that liberal parties take human rights seriously,” Reidski said. “Study shows that when liberals and left-wing parties solve the far-right problem, they don’t win populist voters, but lose their own voters.”

Promote reform

The winners of this presidential election are crucial to the current administration, who has been reforming, who used his veto to stop them.

This includes reversal of the controversial judicial reforms proposed by the law and the judicial government during its eight-year rule. The European Court of Justice believes that several legal and judicial reforms are inconsistent with EU law, especially regarding the independence of the judiciary, and began imposing fines on Poland in 2021.

"The most critical part of the election is whether the current government can fully implement its plans. One of the characteristics of the political stage over the past 18 months is that the government has been blocked in many things in many things," said Ben Stanley, a sociologist and political scientist at SWPS in Warsaw, who said at SWPS University.

"If Navoroki wins, it will certainly lead to a situation that will keep things going, as there are currently hostile presidents that reject or threaten to veto what the government wants to do. This will affect the rule of law issue and many elements on the government's legislative agenda."

“It will also send a signal to voters that the law and justice have the ability to win the next election and that if it does win the next election (November 2027), it will have its president.”