Donald Tusk self-isolates with Covid-19 symptoms

He recently chaired a meeting involving some centre-right European prime ministers

Poland's Donald Tusk is a key figure in the European Union. AP

Donald Tusk, a former president of the European Council and a leading figure in the European Union, is self-isolating with symptoms of coronavirus.

Mr Tusk is the current president of the European People’s Party (EPP), the international coalition of centre-right parties in the European Union that includes Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party.

“As of October 27, President Tusk has been self-isolating with symptoms,” a party official said. “He is awaiting test results.”

On October 15, he chaired a meeting of EPP prime ministers and senior party figures before an EU summit in Brussels.

It was not immediately known if he was self-isolating in Brussels, the capital of Belgium which is suffering with a serious second wave of coronavirus, or Poland.

Mr Tusk became leader of the EPP - the alliance of centre-right parties from across Europe - in December last year.

As president of the European Council until November 2019, he was a key figure in the EU’s negotiations for Brexit.

Mr Tusk has been involved in Polish politics since the early 1990s and in 2011 and became the first prime minister to be re-elected since the collapse of communism in the country.

In 2014, he became president of the European Council and was re-elected to this position in 2017, a job he left in November 2019.