Poland’s former Conservative (PiS) Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is facing the threat of expulsion from his party because of his refusal to disband a factional association he has set up with his allies.
The main opposition Conservatives (PiS) have decided to ban party members from participating in associations, foundations, and other organizations of a political nature.
The decision has been taken because of concerns that Mateusz Morawiecki’s “Development +” association is creating an entity which could morph into a separate political party.
Morawiecki is curently also the leader of the European Conservative Reformers grouping which was previously led by Giorgia Meloni and which is one of the three right wing parliamentary caucuses in the EP. A PiS MEP hostile to Morawiecki, Anna Zalewska, has now called for his removal from that position.
Morawiecki himself said on July 16 he would not back down over the existence of the association he founded and said that it is his critics who are putting party unity in danger.
“At a time of the greatest crisis of Tusk’s government, with a huge number of scandals, the collapse of the healthcare system, and conflicts within the coalition, creating an internal division in our party by a narrow group of plotters is the last thing we need”, he stated alluding to the recent scandals of cronyism, corruption and mismanagement which have hit the present administration.
“My declaration is clear: I want to remain in PiS, I want to progress ‘Development +’. I want an ambitious Poland to win. All of this is possible only together”, he declared.
Sources close to PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński have said that the party leadership is trying to limit the size of any breakaway group and to flush it out well ahead of the approaching parliamentary elections in autumn 2027.
They also claim that Kaczyński is concerned that the existence of a separate political entity within PiS could be used as justification for the elections regulator to rule that the party is in receipt of illegal funds from external bodies leading to the removal of all state subsidies from it
The actual decision taken by the party’s executive on July 15 has called on all associations operating within PiS to be dissolved within a period of seven days. It has also ordered Mateusz Morawiecki to cancel a summer barbecue event planned by “Development +” onJuly 31.
According to PiS’s spokesman Rafał Bochenek the decision was taken “to preserve the ideological, organizational, and political unity” of the party.
Bochenek said the resolution stipulates that “PiS members should not participate in the work, meetings, events, or projects organized by such organizations, unless they operate with the approval of the party leadership.”
“PiS members who belong to such organizations should immediately cease their activities within them and withdraw from those organizations within seven days,” Bochenek added.
The PiS spokesman said that a declaration will be sent for signature to all PiS MPs and MEPs in which they will asked to confirm that they are not members of such organizations.
Although there is another political association operating within PiS “Poland First” which represents a more nationalist point of view than that of the economy focused Morawiecki, it was created in opposition to “Development +” and its head Jacek Sasin has already announced that it will be disbanded following the party executive’s decision.
Morawiecki announced the creation of the “Development + association on April 15 whereas the “Poland First” grouping was formed on June 9.
The former PiS Prime Minister’s body was created “in order to broaden the base of appeal to people active in public life who are not necessarily members or supporters of PiS” and who wish the next government formed by the right to concentrate on issues relating to the development and modernization of Poland.
Morawiecki is understood to have formed his association in response to the decision taken by the party leadership in the winter of this year to nominate former PiS education minister Przemysław Czarnek as the party’s candidate for prime minister in next year’s parliamentary elections.
Czarnek is a political figure firmly associated with the conservative wing of the party wishing to concentrate on identity issues, social conservatism and Euroscepticism rather than the economy.
The decision to select Czarnek was an welcome one for Morawiecki who has made no secret of his ambition to be Prime Minister again.
Morawiecki dismissed accusations of disloyalty with regard to the creation of his own association by pointing to the fact that his government, now often criticized by those in the nationalist faction and by former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, was following decisions approved of by the party leadership.
“It is those who have been attacking the last PiS government who are being disloyal” claims Morawiecki, adding that it is these attacks which have led to the party losing support in the polls from an average of 35 percent last year to 26 percent today.
Czarnek and his supporters however have been briefing that Morawiecki was too accommodating towards the EU when in office on issues such as the Green Deal and the conditionality mechanism making EU funds dependent on rule of law observance.
They believe that Morawiecki’s record on staunch support for Ukraine, his support for compromises with the EU and for lockdowns during the Covid pandemic make him an unacceptable candidate for the voters who have defected over the last two years to the two parties to the right of PiS: the Confederation Party and the breakaway Polish |Crown Party led by maverick MEP Grzegorz Braun
However Morawiecki has been arguing that if the aim of getting right wing voters back into the PIs fold was the objective that lay behind selecting Czarnek it has failed as recent polls have shown support for PiS continuing to be in the doldrums while the ratings for Confederation and the Polish Crown parties continue to grow.
Several polls now indicate that the Confederation party with around 15 percent and the Polish Crown with 10 percent are at least the equal of PiS which is averaging 25 percent.
But last week it looked as if Czarnek had gotten himself into serious problems with his leader Jarosław Kaczyński when the PM candidate in a TV interview said that the EU should not help Ukraine any more unless Ukraine stops its honouring of the nationalists responsible for the Volhynia massacre in which over 100,000 civilian Poles were slaughtered.
Speaking on independent conservative channel TV Republika on July 13, Czarnek said Poland should “use its position in the European Union and NATO to pressure Ukraine into changing its policy towards Poland and to compel the EU to suspend funding for Ukraine’s reconstruction until Ukraine embraces pro-human values.”
Kaczyński criticized the remarks and said that Czarnek must explain himself. Commentators began to speculate on whether the PiS leader was planning to remove Czarnek from the position of PM designate.
However, during the PiS national executive meeting it was decided that Czarnek would remain the party’s prime ministerial candidate.
The party’s spokesman Rafał Bochenek told journalists that the matter regarding Czarnek’s remarks on Ukraine “had already been clarified” and that “there was no dispute” since the party leader and Czarnek “think along very similar lines”.
He blamed the media for giving Czarnek’s words a different meaning from the one they actually had but did not explain exactly in what way the former minister’s words had been misinterpreted.
The divisions within the PiS and the party’s weak poll ratings have certainly received attention from Donald Tusk, who leads the present centre-left government.
Liberal media have reported that Tusk told a closed meeting of his parliamentarians that the era in which PiS was his Civic Coalition’s (KO) main opponent was over. According to the Prime Minister PiS no longer holds sway on the Polish right.
According to Tusk the Confederation and Polish Crown parties are on the rise because their radical language appeals to younger and more right wing voters while PiS carries baggage from its 8 year period in office.
Moreover, Tusk believes that President Karol Nawrocki, elected last year with PiS support, is closer to the two other parties of the right rather than to PiS.
Sources quoted by liberal media such as portal Onet have reported that Tusk said little about Czarnek and those close to the Prime Minister told them that he does not take Czarnek as a serious proposition during the election.
Several conservative commentators agree and claim that Czarnek will be sacrificed ahead of the election unless PiS poll ratings improve and that after the election the midwife of any future right wing government will be President Nawrocki.
But they do not think Morawiecki has much chance of realizing his ambition of becoming PM since he remains personal non grata with the Confederation and Polish Crown parties, as well as with many PiS members too.
If Morawiecki does decide to go it alone his critics believe that he will either fail to cross the 5 percent electoral threshold or be forced into an electoral alliance with the centre-right Polish People’s Party (PSL), a grouping which is part of the Tusk government.
Morawiecki, a former senior banker, was a member of a body advising Donald Tusk during his first spell in government (2007-2014) before hitching his colours to PiS’s mast before the 2015 election.
He served first as finance minister before becoming PiS Prime Minister in 2017, a post in which he remained until 2023 when PiS were removed from office by the current Tusk coalition.
Kaczyński had at one time, when Morawiecki was still PM, hinted that he might succeed him as party leader. However, Kaczyński who is a 77 years old who has led the party since he founded it in 2001, has not retired and relations between him and the ambitious Morawiecki have of late become strained because Morawiecki has publicly displayed his disagreement over PiS moving to the right.
He has received a lot more support from local activists and MPs that his opponents had bargained for, but PiS is a party which is controlled by Kaczyński who dominates the national executive and has the final power to both determine who is and who is not a member of the party.
Morawiecki has in defiance said that he will not cancel the barbecue to which hundreds have already been invited. That means that he will continue to be grilled by his colleagues and maybe heading for an exit from the party he still claims he would like to lead.
