Donald Tusk
Donald Franciszek Tusk is a Polish politician and historian who has served as the prime minister of Poland since 2023, previously holding the office from 2007 to 2014. Tusk was President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019 and led the European People's Party from 2019 to 2022. He co-founded the Civic Platform, one of the dominant Polish political parties, and was its longtime leader – from 2003 to 2014 and again from 2021 to 2025 - before it merged into the Civic Coalition party. He is the longest-serving prime minister of the Third Polish Republic.
Tusk has been officially involved in politics since 1989, having co-founded multiple political parties, such as the free market–oriented Liberal Democratic Congress party. He first entered the Sejm in 1991 but lost his seat in 1993. In 1994, the KLD merged with the Democratic Union to form the Freedom Union. In 1997, Tusk was elected to the Senate and became its deputy marshal. In 2001, he co-founded another centre-right liberal conservative party, the PO, and was again elected to the Sejm, becoming its deputy marshal. Tusk stood unsuccessfully for President of Poland in the 2005 election and would also suffer defeat in the 2005 Polish parliamentary election.
Leading the PO to victory at the 2007 parliamentary election, he was appointed prime minister, and scored a second victory in the 2011 election, becoming the first Polish prime minister to be re-elected since the fall of communism in 1989. In 2014, he left Polish politics to accept appointment as president of the European Council. The Civic Platform would lose control of both the presidency and parliament to the rival Law and Justice party in the 2015 Polish presidential election and 2015 Polish parliamentary election. Tusk was President of the European Council until 2019; although initially remaining in Brussels as leader of the EPP, he later returned to Polish politics in 2021, becoming leader of the Civic Platform again. In the 2023 election, his Civic Coalition won 157 seats in the Sejm to become the second-largest bloc in the chamber. Following the president-appointed prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki's failure to secure a vote of confidence on 11 December, Tusk was elected by the Sejm to become prime minister for a third time. His cabinet was sworn in on 13 December, ending eight years of government by the PiS party.
Having been the longest-serving prime minister of the Third Republic, Tusk oversaw in his first term the reduction and digitization of the public sector, wishing to present himself as a pragmatic liberal realist and technocrat. In the lead-up to the co-organization by Poland of Euro 2012, he invested strongly in infrastructure, expanding the highway network at the cost of the rail sector. In his second term, various scandals, unfulfilled promises and a cooling of the economy in 2012–2014 as his European debt crisis-related austerity policies led to a drop in public support. In the landscape dominated by the PiS after its electoral victories, as an influential holdout he opposed what he considered its democratic backsliding. Returning to power in 2023, he has focused on reforming the judiciary and warming relations between Poland and the EU. Since then, as PM, Tusk has continued aid to Ukraine after the Russian invasion. In 2024, he surprised the public with his appropriation of right-wing themes, such as opposition to illegal migration, prioritizing border security, going as far as to suspend the right of asylum for those who illegally cross the Belarus–Poland border.
Early life
Tusk was born and raised in Gdańsk in Northern Poland. He has Polish, German and Kashubian origins, self-identifying as Polish, Kashubian and European. His father, Donald Tusk Sr., was a carpenter whilst his mother, Ewa Tusk née Dawidowska, was a nurse. His maternal grandmother's native language was Danzig German.His paternal grandfather, Józef Tusk, a luthier and railway official, was imprisoned in the Neuengamme concentration camp from 1942 to 1944. As a former citizen of the Free City of Danzig, he was subsequently forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht by the Nazi authorities. Stationed on the Western front in Aachen, he defected after four months and joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West, fighting alongside the Western Allies.
Tusk has described the city of his youth as "a typical frontier town" with "many borders between ethnicities". His Kashubian ancestry along with a multilingual family background shaped his early awareness that "nothing is simple in life or in history", leading him to develop a political perspective that "it is best to be immune to every kind of orthodoxy, of ideology, and most importantly, nationalism".
He recalled his youth under communism as having been "so hopeless" due to its monotony, with "no hope for anything to change". He considers his young self a "typical hooligan", often getting into fights – "we would roam the streets, you know, cruising for a bruising". Tusk credits his interest in politics to witnessing clashes between striking workers and riot police as a teenager.
He studied history at the University of Gdańsk, graduating in 1980. During his time at university he was active in the Student Committee of Solidarity, opposing Poland's communist regime of the time.
Early political career
Tusk was one of the founders of the Liberal Democratic Congress, which in the 1991 elections won 37 seats in the lower house of parliament. The KLD later merged with the Democratic Union to become the Freedom Union. Tusk became deputy chairman of the new party, and was elected to the Senate in the next election in 1997. In 2001, he co-founded Civic Platform, and became deputy speaker in parliament after the party won seats in the year's election.2005 Polish presidential election
In the shade of the upcoming expiration of President Aleksander Kwaśniewski's second term and his inability to stand for a third term, Tusk and Lech Kaczyński were the leading candidates for the presidential elections. Although both leading candidates came from the center-right, and their two parties had planned to form a coalition government following the parliamentary elections on 25 September, there were important differences between Tusk and Kaczyński. Tusk wanted to enforce a separation of church and state, favoured rapid European integration and supported a free-market economy. Kaczyński was very socially conservative, a soft Eurosceptic, and supported state intervention. Such differences led to the failure of POPiS coalition talks in late October. Jacek Protasiewicz headed his electoral campaign staff. Tusk's campaign motto was, "President Tusk – A man with principles; We will be proud of Poland." In the election, Tusk received 36.6% of votes in the first round and then faced Kaczyński, who got 33.1% of votes in the first round.In the second round, Tusk was defeated by Kaczyński.
One controversy during the election was the accusation that Tusk's grandfather, Józef Tusk, had been a Nazi collaborator during WWII, having served in the German Wehrmacht during the war. The controversy, according to the BBC, "is believed to have influenced some voters negatively".
First premiership (2007–2014)
Tusk and his Civic Platform party emerged victorious in the 2007 Polish parliamentary election, defeating incumbent Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński's Law and Justice party with about 42% of the vote to Law and Justice's 32%. Tusk and his assembled cabinet were sworn in on 16 November, as he became the fourteenth prime minister of the Third Polish Republic.In the 2011 Polish parliamentary election, Civic Platform retained their Parliamentary majority, giving Tusk a second term as prime minister and making him Poland's first PM to win reelection since the fall of communism. In September 2014, leaders of the European Union voted unanimously by selecting Tusk as Herman van Rompuy's successor for President of the European Council, which gave Poland its first European leadership position since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tusk resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Marshal of the Sejm Ewa Kopacz.
Domestic policy
During the 2007 parliamentary election campaign and initially, when he entered office, Tusk promised to continue the free market policies, streamline the bureaucracy, enact long-term stable governance, cut taxes to attract greater foreign business ventures, encourage Polish citizens living overseas to return to Poland, and privatize state-owned companies. While in office, Tusk changed his views on the role of taxation in the functioning of the state and his government never cut any taxes. Instead, it raised VAT from 22% to 23% in 2011, increased the tax imposed on diesel oil, alcohol, tobacco and coal, and eliminated many tax exemptions. The number of people employed in public administration also grew considerably. By 2012, the value of foreign investments in Poland had not matched the peak level attained in 2006–07, before Tusk entered office. The number of Poles living abroad in 2013 was almost the same level as in 2007.During his government, Tusk oversaw the austerity programme.
The construction of a more adequate and larger national road network in preparation for the UEFA 2012 football championships was a stated priority for Tusk's government. On 27 October 2009, Tusk declared that he wanted to ban gambling partially. During the 2009 swine flu pandemic, Tusk defended his government's decision not to purchase swine flu vaccine, citing the lack of testing by pharmaceutical companies and its unavailability to be purchased freely through the market. Tusk criticized other nations' responses to the pandemic. "The eagerness of some countries seems to be excessive and disproportionate to the real epidemiological situation," Tusk stated, referring to the pandemic's relatively low fatality rate.
Tusk was moderately conservative on social issues for a long time. He was opposed to legalizing abortion on demand, believing that current Polish legislation on abortion at that time protected human life best. Tusk had publicly stated that he opposed euthanasia.
In June 2022, Tusk changed his stance on abortion, supporting a bill that would legalize abortion up to 12 weeks.