Third Cabinet of Donald Tusk
The Third Cabinet of Donald Tusk is the coalition government of Poland headed by Donald Tusk who was officially nominated and confirmed as the Prime Minister of Poland on 11 December 2023 by the members of the Sejm following the failure of Mateusz Morawiecki's Third Cabinet to secure a vote of confidence. On 12 December, Tusk addressed the parliament and announced members of his cabinet, later that day Tusk's cabinet successfully obtained a vote of confidence with 248 of the 460 MPs voting in the affirmative. He and his cabinet were officially sworn in by president Andrzej Duda on 13 December 2023.
Tusk previously served as Prime Minister of Poland between 2007 and 2014, President of the European Council between 2014 and 2019, and the president of the European People's Party from 2019 to 2022. The opposition's victory in the 2023 Polish parliamentary election and Tusk's return to power in Poland were mostly positively received by the international community, with multiple news outlets pointing to the erosion of certain democratic structures in Poland and the worsening of the country's relationship with the European Union under the former right-wing government led by Law and Justice.
Background
2023 parliamentary election
Tusk's cabinet was formed following the dissolution of Morawiecki's caretaker government originally established as the result of 2023 Polish parliamentary election, which took place on Sunday, 15 October 2023. The United Right won a plurality of seats but fell short of a Sejm majority. The opposition, including the Civic Coalition, Poland 2050, Polish Coalition, and The Left, secured a Senate majority.Although the United Right would be unable to govern on its own, the Polish president Andrzej Duda stated his intention to re-appoint the incumbent Mateusz Morawiecki as Prime Minister due to the existing albeit unofficial convention of nominating a member of the winning party. The four opposition parties criticized Duda's decision as a delay tactic. The opposition parties subsequently signed a coalition agreement on 10 November, de facto taking over control of the Sejm, and agreed to nominate former Prime Minister and European Council President Donald Tusk as their candidate. Morawiecki's new cabinet, dubbed "two-week government" and "zombie government" by the media due to its anticipated short-livedness, was sworn in on 27 November 2023.