Polish PM and opposition leader clash over rising energy costs

Opposition leader Donald Tusk has accused the Polish government of overseeing a steep rise in energy prices which he says some people will “not survive”.

In response, the head of the government, Mateusz Morawiecki, accused Tusk of being the “prime minister of Polish poverty” during his time in office. He also criticised Tusk’s inaction against the EU’s climate policies, which the Polish government has argued are behind rising costs.

Last month, Poland’s energy regulator announced that electricity bills would jump by an average of 24% in the new year and gas bills by 54%. Surging energy prices have driven Poland’s highest inflation in two decades, which is set to rise further still this year.

In a New Year’s speech addressed to Morawiecki, Tusk – who returned as leader of Civic Platform (PO), the largest opposition party, in July – accused the government of being responsible. “Are you all crazy?” he asked. “People will not survive such price increases.”

He claimed that the government’s “horrible legislation” would result in thousands of households facing hikes of “several hundred percent” on their bills. That was a reference to a regulation that precludes people living in housing cooperatives with central gas heating from receiving subsidies shielding against the gas price rise.

“We are receiving an avalanche of this information,” Tusk said, citing examples of gas price increases around Poland. They included a single mother with two children in Radom facing a rise from 88 zloty to 350 zloty for her 25-square-metre flat, and a pensioner in a 54-square-metre flat in the Wawer district of Warsaw with a rise from 195 zloty to 1,609 zloty.

Tusk called on Morawiecki to pledge that the price rise would not come into force in the new year. He also said that his party had a bill prepared to counteract the price hikes, which it would present in January.

The following day, Morawiecki fired back with a video on Twitter and Facebook calling Tusk, who led the government from 2007 to 2014, the “prime minister of Polish poverty”.

“I am glad that you have finally become interested in the fate of ordinary Polish families,” said Morawiecki. “We had to wait a long time for this.”

Morawiecki claimed that in 2014 – when Tusk left “to pursue a career in Brussels” as head of the European Council – people in Poland were earning much lower wages and pensions than now. They also did not have access to social benefits introduced by Morawiecki’s Law and Justice (PiS) government after taking power in 2015.

He claimed that a single mother of two children would not earn even 1,250 zloty (€272 today) per month after tax and that a pensioner from Wawer would receive a minimum monthly pension of 830 zloty (€181 today) before tax.

The prime minister also promoted the changes coming into force on 1 January with the government’s flagship stimulus programme and tax reform, dubbed the “Polish Deal” (Polski Ład), as well as new subsidies and tax cuts to cushion the blow of inflation.

Under PiS, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, which peaked at 7.4% in 2014, fell to 4.2% in 2019. It has, however, subsequently risen amid the pandemic and growing inflation.

In his video, Morawiecki argued that inflation had also been “hovering around 5%” during Tusk’s time in government. Yet whereas PiS has taken action to protect the public from its effect, “you buried your head deep in the sand”.

Inflation in Poland reached 7.8% in November, the highest figure since the year 2000. The governor of the central bank last week forecast that it would average 7.6% in 2022, with a peak of 8.3% in June.

Morawiecki also criticised Tusk for not doing anything to improve the EU Emissions Trading System, which Poland’s government has blamed for soaring energy prices. You could “at any time start asking your colleagues from Brussels to finally reform CO2 emissions trading”, he told Tusk.

The prime minister also published a set of mocked-up letters written in the name of Tusk to, among others, former German chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commissioner vice president Frans Timmermans.

In the fake letters, “Tusk” admits that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was a “huge error” and the result of “naive” cooperation with Vladimir Putin. It should serves as a “bitter lesson for me and all European progressive forces”.

In response, the real Tusk called the mock letters “inappropriate”, reports Interia. “Prime Minister Morawiecki did not notice the essence of the problem,” he said. “This is not a question of who will tease the other more wittily. This is a problem that requires his intervention.”

But, “since they are throwing all responsibility on the opposition and me personally”, perhaps “it would be better if they gave up power”, Tusk told TVN24.

Main image credit: EPP/Flickr (under CC BY 2.0)

Maria Wilczek

Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.