Four new ministers named in first reshuffle of Tusk’s Polish government

May 10, 2024 | Politics

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has named four new ministers in the first reshuffle of his government since it took office five months ago. He is replacing the heads of the interior, culture, state assets and development ministries after they stepped down to stand in next month’s European elections.

“The ministers who are bidding farewell today have performed their task effectively,” said Tusk at a press conference on Friday alongside both the departing and newly nominated ministers.

“These first months [in office] were about ‘breaking down the wall’,” added the prime minister, referring to the task of tackling the legacy left by the Law and Justice (PiS) government that ruled from 2015 until the end of 2023. “Now it is time to put things in order.”

The ministers who submitted their resignations today are Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz (culture), Marcin Kierwiński (interior), Borys Budka (state assets) and Krzysztof Hetman (development and technology).

Their departure was already expected after the quartet were named last month as candidates for the European elections.

Sienkiewicz, Kierwiński and Budka are standing for Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO) and Hetman for the centre-right Polish People’s Party (PSL), which is also part of Tusk’s ruling coalition.

Kierwiński will be replaced at the interior ministry by Tomasz Siemoniak, a political veteran who is already the minister in charge of the security services (a role he will continue alongside his new one). He also served as defence minister from 2011 to 2015 in Tusk’s previous government.

The new culture minister is Hanna Wróblewska, who served for 11 years as the director of Warsaw’s Zachęta National Gallery of Art and more recently as a deputy director of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum. Since December, she has been head of the culture ministry’s Department of National Cultural Institutions.

At the ministry of state assets, Budka will be replaced by Jakub Jaworowski, an economist who worked in Tusk’s chancellery during his previous stint as prime minister. The new development minister will be Krzysztof Paszyk, who since last year has served as the head of PSL’s parliamentary caucus.

The four new ministers will be sworn into office by President Andrzej Duda on Monday.

Among the departing ministers, Sienkiewicz in particular has played a prominent and controversial role since being appointed in December.

He was tasked with leading the new government’s efforts to remove the influence of PiS over public media, which had been turned into a party propaganda mouthpiece. That was a mission he has largely achieved, though in a manner that has raised many legal question marks.

“Sienkiewicz had a particularly difficult task,” said Tusk today. “I would like to thank you on behalf of myself and the entire public, for whom healing the situation in the public media, both politically and organisationally, was one of the fundamental tasks assigned to the [ruling] coalition.”


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Main image credit: Krystian Maj/KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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