Tusk speaks in parliament
Donald Tusk is now addressing the Polish parliament, a day after it voted in favour of him as prime minister.
Over 200,000 people are watching the speech live on Youtube, underscoring the significant public interest in parliament’s proceedings over the past days.
Key events
Polish parliament session begins
The Sejm session is under way. Here is a photo of Donald Tusk in the parliament this morning. He is expected to speak soon.
The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has also congratulated Donald Tusk, underlining that “Poland is a key partner for Sweden, not least for security in Baltic Sea Region and support for Ukraine.”
Congratulations to Prime Minister @DonaldTusk and the new Polish Government. Poland is a key partner for Sweden, not least for security in Baltic Sea Region and support for Ukraine. Looking forward to discussing in the near future how we can deepen our cooperation.
— SwedishPM (@SwedishPM) December 12, 2023
Donald Tusk’s second coming: can returning PM remake Poland?
Daniel Boffey
It was the young Donald Tusk’s habit, after watching or playing a game of football with friends, to make two toasts at the Pod Kasztanami bar in Gdańsk: the first to the fortunes of his club, Lechia Gdańsk, and the second to the “end of komunizm” in Poland.
Tusk, 66, is unlikely to make the annual game of football that his close circle has been playing for the last 40 years, always at noon on New Year’s Eve, but at the final whistle there is likely to be a tentative third toast offered – to Tusk’s return as prime minister and the end of Poland’s disastrous flirtation with a populism that has ploughed deep divisions in society, undermined democratic institutions and driven a wedge between Warsaw and the EU.
Tusk’s return after eight years of rule by the Law & Justice party (PiS) will be a moment of satisfaction for those raising a glass of vodka in Gdańsk; many of those playing have supported him since his time as a student organiser working with the anti-communist Solidarity movement that emerged from strikes at the local shipyards. But they will also recognise that Tusk’s second coming is far from guaranteed to succeed; communism did fall in Poland, but the performance of Lechia Gdańsk never did match the passion of its fans.
Today, a day after parliament voted in favour of making him prime minister, Tusk will present his government, an ungainly coalition of his Civic Coalition group with the agrarian conservative Third Way party and the New Left.
Although he will once again gain access to Willa Parkowa, a handsome whitewashed official residence a few hundred yards from the chancellery in Warsaw, his friends say they expect him to spend as much time as possible in his family’s modest ground-floor apartment in Sopot, a prosperous city on Poland’s Baltic coast, just north of the larger Gdańsk.
Read the full story here.
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‘True friend’: Varadkar congratulates Tusk
Irish leader Leo Varadkar has congratulated Donald Tusk, after the Polish parliament voted in favour of the longtime politician becoming prime minister.
“You were a true friend and ally to Ireland during Brexit,” Varadkar said.
