Rafał Trzaskowski announced that this year's Campus Poland will not be held. authoritative reason? ‘Fair enough’. However, you do not gotta wonder long to realize what the politician meant: after the defeat in the presidential election and the decline in importance in the Civic Platform, the project, which was to be his individual political vehicle, lost its meaning.
Campus from the very beginning was an ideological undertaking aimed at young but strictly subordinate to Trzaskovsky's goals. It promoted left-wing liberal slogans specified as the demands of "equality", climate radicalism, or the moral revolution, trying to make a fresh generation of activists compatible with the European left-wing line. All of this was carefully packed in appearances of apolitical, youth dialogue, although in fact it was an event with a clear political profile.
Now, after defeat in elections, Trzaskowski admits that Campus will not take place in its current formula. There is not a word of self-criticism or reflection on the fact that possibly the task was artificial, served mainly self-promotion and had no root outside the bubble of the Warsaw elite. Instead, dry information and evasive translations.
"We return in August 2026. We request time to think about how to organise ourselves in a changing reality," writes Trzaskowski.
Changing reality? Or is it a failure of backroom, backing and influence? Campus operated as long as Trzaskowski was seen as a possible leader. After his political defeat, no 1 wants to invest in a facade initiative without real meaning.
In return, the "Campus Academy" is proposed – an event aimed only at volunteers. alternatively of an open forum, a closed event for the most faithful, where most likely the same ideological communicative will inactive be reproduced. Trzaskowski calls volunteers "the heart of Campus", but it is hard to defy the impression that it is an effort to save the face, not a fresh idea.
The facts are: Campus was a PR tool to take Trzaskowski to the summit. It didn't. Now he disappears, as shortly as the enthusiasm around him. There is no "reflection" or "changing reality" here – alternatively a political bankruptcy, covered by good slogans.
Let this be a lesson: erstwhile a political task is based solely on image and ideological fashion, it must collapse sooner or later. Campus was neither grassroots nor pluralistic. He was just 1 of many balloons pumped by a media-political bubble – and just burst.
