Polish President Andrzej Duda has once again declared war on Donald Tusk’s government. But this time with reservations. On Wednesday evening, the President announced that he would present the budget of the new, liberal-conservative government to the Constitutional Court. This is still occupied by PiS supporters. Duda explained that two MPs were missing from the vote and that the court should therefore check whether the resolution was valid. In recent days there has been speculation as to whether the president might want to call new elections. The topic seems to be off the table for now. Duda signed the budget plan.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk immediately declared via Platform X: “The budget has been signed and that’s all it was about. Everything else is irrelevant.” The money will reach the people, nothing can stop that. If Duda had not agreed to the budget plan, he could have dismissed the government and called new elections based on this decision. Instead, he shifts responsibility to the Constitutional Court – whose rulings the new government does not recognize anyway because it is not politically independent.
Duda could harm himself
But Duda has made a long-term threat. By the two MPs who were missing from the budget vote, he means the former Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński and the ex-State Secretary Maciej Wąsik. Both were sentenced to prison for abuse of office, but were pardoned by the president. Despite being pardoned, they have finally lost their mandate in the House of Representatives. Duda doesn’t see that and has now announced that he will submit any law that is passed in the Sejm to the Constitutional Court – as long as the two PiS politicians are not allowed to return to their parliamentary group. That means actually as long as he is still in office – until mid-2025.
This could also harm himself, at least that’s what some commentators saw on Thursday. The new budget includes funds for increasing teacher salaries. Before the election there were protests from teachers, many of whom receive little more than the minimum wage even after a few years of service. Duda could have incurred the wrath of the teachers if he had not signed. The same applies to government plans to provide tax relief for entrepreneurs or to pay rent subsidies to those in need. Stopping social legislation probably won’t help the president’s reputation.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk had already turned the tables on Tuesday and declared that if the relationship did not become more constructive and the president made governing more difficult, he would call new elections himself. Knowing full well that support for the PiS party is falling in surveys. On Thursday in Brussels, Tusk repeated this statement. He doesn’t have time to run another election campaign: “We have too much work,” said the Prime Minister. “But if they want new elections, then they’ll get them.” But he believes that the PiS party’s interest in it is not that great. “At the end of the day, it seems to me that they will leave Poland alone with these strange ideas.”