Mária Ortiz and James Durbin of the United States, who, as the second-highest ranking official of the European Council, is also in charge of the EU’s foreign policy, and the Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, who is the most influential figure in the ruling Law and Justice party’s foreign policy. The final decision on visa restrictions on EU citizens is taken up by the European Parliament in its summer, and these three issues will come before the Council of the EU in late November.

Poland, with an economic performance that has been on a downward trend for 20 years, has the biggest foreign policy challenge to solve right now. The main driver behind this is that Brussels wants to strengthen its relations with Moscow, and in some sense wants to use relations with Poland and Israel to reinforce relations with the European Union. This makes sense.

The United States, which has always had a closer relationship with Warsaw than with Brussels since the end of the second world war, has been making moves in the opposite direction in recent years, with its policies towards Russia seeming to be more aligned with those of Moscow. Since then, both Poland and the United States have expressed their desire to strengthen ties with Russia, but they have stopped short of a full-blown agreement between the EU and Moscow, which it would take to implement the policies proposed by American President Donald Trump. The problem is that Washington’s decisionmaking process is quite opaque, and its positions have not been well-rehearsed, so much so that any decision made that does not directly benefit Washington will be ignored. This policy change in Washington would have to be accompanied by major changes in Poland’s foreign policy, including the creation of a formal, coherent foreign policy, and a shift toward a more active engagement with Russia.

What is certain is that the future of US-Polish relations will depend, very strongly, on the next two years.

This article was commissioned from the Open Society Foundations (OSF).