Is pro-EU Polish government about to fall?
Major cracks are starting to appear in the rainbow coalition which came to power in Poland last year.
That coalition is led by the EU's blue-eyed-boy Donald Tusk and his Civic Coalition, alongside the more right-leaning Third Way, and the aptly-named New Left.
It was already beset with disputes, united only by a desire to oust the nationalist Law and Justice party which actually won last year's election but without enough seats in parliament to form a workable government. Law and Justice (or PiS to use its Polish initials) was broadly supported by its tough immigration stance but many Poles felt it overreached on reforms to abortion.
So happy was the EU about Tusk - former President of the European Council - becoming Prime Minister that it seemingly waived all objections to EU funds long-held up in a rule of law dispute with PiS being sent to Warsaw on the strength of Tusk's good word.
Now the coalition Tusk leads - and which the EU banked upon - could be coming apart.
Earlier this month, Tusk suffered a major defeat when a parliamentary vote to stop prosecuting people who assist with abortions failed by 218 to 215 votes because of conservatives within his own coalition.
Even in devoutly Catholic Poland - the EU's most religious member state - there had been a sense that earlier reforms to abortion went too far, with reports of women dying because they were denied the procedure.
But instead of joining hands with Tusk, coalition members from the Polish People’s Party element of Third Way joined Law and Justice and the Right-wing Confederation to vote down Tusk's proposal.
Tusk even had to suspend two of his own MPs who voted against the bill (a third was in hospital and unable to vote).
While conservatives from Third Way want abortion only in certain circumstances, such as threatening the mother's life, if the foetus is irreversibly damaged, or if an illegal act led to the pregnancy, Civic Coalition and the New Left want abortion up until the 12th week of pregnancy. This gap in desired outcomes now seems almost unbridgeable.
There is also the fact that President Andrzej Duda - a noted conservative and PiS ally - could veto any plan.
Another headache looms for Tusk over LGBT rights, with conservative coalition members likely to again join with Law and Justice in voting down a proposal to introduce same-sex partnerships.
This all comes as the EU faces the prospect of a Tusk government which is already having to yield to Poland's conservative values, with the new Polish government having rejected an EU migration pact which intends to force member states to share responsibility for migrants.
But in conservative Poland there is little appetite for anything which may open the door to mass immigration. Nor, despite a sense the previous government's abortion reforms went too far, is there any appetite for wholesale liberal reforms nationwide.
The danger for Tusk - and his cheerleaders in the EU - is that his government starts to fall apart, firstly because it has to bend to a still-conservative majority nationwide, and secondly because this rainbow coalition is just too fractured to work together.
In a sense Tusk faces the reverse problem to Giorgia Meloni in Italy or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, conservatives who must accommodate to the fact their countries have shifted markedly to the Left.
Should things actually fall apart, and given that Law and Justice support is holding up (as recent local elections demonstrated), Brussels could face the nightmare of a massive U-turn in Polish politics.
Law and Justice already believes Brussels used the withholding of EU funds in the run-up to last October's election to get the outcome it desired: a Tusk victory. Should the nationalists return to office there will be an even greater chasm between its leaders and the EU, with trust levels between the two sides at just about rock bottom.
In that scenario, the cultural Iron Curtain which already bisects the EU and Europe between a conservative and homogeneous East and a liberal and diverse West will be greater than ever.
