Poland's prime minister has accused western Europe's most powerful leaders of hypocrisy and myopia in the midst of what is being called the EU's worst crisis.

Assuming the rotating presidency of the EU for the first time, Donald Tusk rounded on the leaders of Germany, France, Italy, and Britain over their handling of the sovereign debt crisis in Greece, immigration, EU spending and the budget. He charged them with posing as European champions while pandering to a new form of Euroscepticism for personal political gain, and of using fears about immigration to curb freedom of travel in Europe.

The passionate and optimistic defence of the EU from the Polish leader was completely at odds with the mood in Brussels and other EU capitals, where commitment to the union is being eroded by the rise of populist Brussels-bashing, squabbling leaders, and soaring mistrust between member states. In defiance of the gloomy European zeitgeist, Tusk said: "The European Union is great. It is the best place on Earth to be born and to live your life."

He said he would use his six-month presidency to try to restore some sense of common purpose and confidence to a union in dire straits. Tusk is riding high in Poland, heading for victory in an October election that would make him the first Polish prime minister to win a second term in 22 years of democracy. He leads the only country in Europe not thrust into recession by the financial crisis, the fastest-growing economy in the EU, and where the EU enjoys high popularity ratings of more than 80%, not least because of the €10bn (£9bn) pouring in every year from Brussels, making Poland the biggest beneficiary of EU largesse.

He dismissed talk of the EU encroaching on the sovereignty of the nation states of Europe, referring to his own experience as a Solidarity activist in communist Poland under martial law and Moscow's control.

"Until quite recently we saw a real restriction on our sovereignty," he said. "We were truly occupied by the Soviets. It was truly an occupation. That's why for us EU integration is not a threat to the sovereignty of the member states."

Tusk's buoyant message from a booming country sounded like a plea to Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris and other EU leaders to shift course and try to reverse the sense of decline and defeatism seizing Europe. "I just want to resist the phenomenon of the new Euroscepticism that is everywhere," he said.

He was not referring to the intellectual hostility to the EU that is the traditional British position, Tusk said, but a more insidious and hypocritical trend in countries long committed to Europe.

"The different phenomenon I am talking about is the birth of a type of Euroscepticism which does not declare itself. But it's the behaviour, the words, the actions by politicians who say they are for the EU, support further integration, but at the same time suggest actions and decisions that weaken the community."

He singled out the French and Italian campaigns, supported by many others, to use the north African upheavals to reintroduce national border controls and curb the travel liberties enjoyed under the EU's Schengen system.

"I sometimes feel that some forget, maybe because they've been using freedom of movement much longer than myself, a Pole, what great value it is to have freedom of movement in the EU."

In a dig at David Cameron, Tusk also lamented the months of trench warfare looming over how to divvy up the next medium-term EU budget, describing the contest as one between those who want the budget to be "one of the main tools for European integration" and those who want "to give as little as possible to Europe".

Despite Tusk's plea to revive a Europe beset by weariness, frictions, and attempts to re-nationalise policymaking, the divisions were again evident when finance ministers of the 17 countries using the euro cancelled an emergency meeting on Greece scheduled for Sunday.

The meeting had been billed as crucial to frame a new bailout of Greece after the country's prime minister, George Papandreou, in Athens delivered on the EU's terms last week by securing parliamentary backing for a savage austerity package ordered by Brussels and Berlin.

Tusk was scathing of the EU's halting response to the 18-month Greek crisis. His criticism was echoed in an unusual intervention by the German president, Christian Wulff, who challenged the dithering by Merkel and Europe. "Europe is about giving and taking and you have to communicate that," Wulff told the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit. "Europe and the euro are worth German's special efforts because both are exactly in Germany's interests. Without a persuasive and viable concept involving everyone, people's doubts all over Europe will increase … There are calls in many places for renationalisation, for border controls, for defences against the foreigner and the foreign while populists propagate a supposedly once better world.