Poland is on the way to a new government without the right-wing nationalist PiS party. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki lost the confidence vote in the Sejm this afternoon. That was expected. Since the election to the two parliamentary chambers, Sejm and Senate, on October 15, the PiS party, which has ruled for eight years, has no longer had a majority. Donald Tusk was to be elected as the candidate for prime minister that evening. Tusk leads an alliance of four parties that have already signed a coalition agreement. The 66-year-old was Prime Minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014 and is chairman of the liberal Citizens’ Coalition (KO).
Tusk and his alliance want to reverse the previous government’s judicial reform and depoliticize the courts as quickly as possible. This is the only way Poland can get the blocked EU billions; it involves funds from several pots, a total of around 100 billion euros. They also want to restore freedom of expression in public broadcasting. The new government will be more pro-European in that the coalition partners have already declared that they will accept the EU’s rules. But they too will not be prepared to accept more refugees from Asia or Africa. They are critical of EU reforms that lead to greater integration of states.
Morawiecki became prime minister exactly six years ago to the day
Even before it began, the meeting in the Polish House of Representatives, the Sejm, was considered historic. Parliament Speaker Szymon Hołownia, who is one of Tusk’s coalition members, said: “This is an epochal day, a day of fundamental change.” Mateusz Morawiecki had announced a “historic” government declaration. For him personally it was: Morawiecki had become prime minister exactly six years earlier to the day. Now he has to give up this position.
After Morawiecki presented his so-called exposé in the morning, an intensive debate followed. First, the chairman of PiS, Jarosław Kaczyński, took to the podium and declared – as he has often done – that Poland’s independence was threatened by Brussels, but especially by Berlin. According to Kaczyński, the German federal government actually has the say in the EU. It was only later in the afternoon that the vote of confidence was asked in the Sejm; after the election, Donald Tusk’s camp has a majority of 248 with a total of 460 seats. The PiS party is the strongest faction with 194 seats, but did not find a coalition partner.
Despite this apparent majority, President Andrzej Duda initially swore in a Morawiecki cabinet on November 13th. Duda had explained that it was customary to give the strongest faction the task of forming a government. After Morawiecki failed, the MPs in the Sejm are allowed to choose the next candidate. Tusk wanted to present his cabinet and his government plans to the Sejm on Tuesday. President Duda could swear in the new government on Wednesday. Tusk then wants to leave immediately for the EU summit in Brussels.
Duda was present in the Sejm on Monday as a listener. However, he has appointments in Switzerland on Tuesday, which is why the swearing-in ceremony cannot take place in Warsaw until Wednesday at the earliest. December 13th is an important date for Poland – in 1981, martial law was declared on this day and the democratic Solidarity movement was violently suppressed. Critics of PiS and Duda are therefore certain that they deliberately want to connect this black day in Polish history with that – from PiS’s point of view – new black day, Tusk’s inauguration. Both Tusk, who was born in Gdańsk, as well as Kaczyński and Morawiecki were active in Solidarity.
The leader of Solidarity, Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Wałęsa, watched the Sejm session on Monday from the public gallery. The Tusk camp cheered him on. In Warsaw, people watched the action live in one of the cinema halls of the Palace of Culture; Not only did television broadcast live, daily newspapers also set up video streams on their websites.
Also on Monday, Poland’s Constitutional Court, which had been politicized under the PiS governments, announced a new ruling on EU law. This contradicts the Polish constitution. It was therefore unlawful to impose penalties against Poland because the country continued to operate the Turów open-cast brown coal mine without carrying out appropriate environmental assessments. According to the Polish court, such regulations resulted in “Poland no longer functioning as a sovereign state.”