Polish government wins confidence vote after presidential election blow

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By Barbara Erling and Alan Charlish

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland’s pro-European coalition government won a vote of confidence on Wednesday, a result that Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said he hopes will give his cabinet new momentum after it was shaken by a setback in the presidential election.

Rafal Trzaskowski from Tusk’s Civic Coalition was defeated by nationalist Karol Nawrocki in the June 1 runoff vote, unleashing recriminations from the smaller partners in the coalition government and casting doubt over the administration’s future when a hostile president is able to wield veto powers.

Tusk’s broad coalition has 242 lawmakers in the 460-seat lower house, or Sejm, meaning it was always likely to survive Wednesday’s vote of confidence.

“We have a mandate to take full responsibility for what’s going on in Poland,” Tusk told parliament in a debate ahead of the confidence vote. “Governing Poland is a privilege.”

Tusk listed higher defence spending and a cut in his government’s visa issuance for migrants as major achievements since he took power in December 2023, replacing the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), which backs Nawrocki.

He said his government would continue its efforts to roll back judicial reforms implemented by PiS that the European Union says undermine the courts’ independence. Poland’s outgoing president, Andrzej Duda, also a PiS ally, has so far blocked the government’s attempts to reverse the judicial reforms.

Tusk also said the government would ensure that people linked to the previous PiS government who are suspected of wrongdoing are held to account.

Responding to Tusk’s speech on X, PiS lawmaker Jacek Sasin accused the prime minister and his team of incompetence and mendacity.

“Remove these lazybones and pests from power before they destroy everything completely!” he said.

Analysts say many Polish voters are disillusioned with the government’s failure to deliver on promises including liberalising abortion laws, reforming the judiciary and raising the threshold at which Poles start paying taxes.

In an interview published on Wednesday, President-elect Nawrocki told Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily that he would sign a law to raise the tax-allowance threshold and would even submit such a bill himself if the government did not.

In an apparent swipe at the government’s failure to implement the 100 promises it made for its first 100 days, Nawrocki said he would “do (them) for Donald Tusk. Isn’t that conciliatory?”

(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz and Barbara Erling; editing by Barbara Lewis, Gareth Jones)