WARSAW — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Wednesday reshuffled his government in an effort to regain the initiative after his party’s candidate scored a bruising defeat in the June 1 presidential election.

“After the political earthquake that was the presidential election, we need to move forward. I speak from the heart, enough whining,” Tusk said.

The new Cabinet is being trimmed to 21 ministers from 26, and the biggest changes include the creation of a new super ministry in charge of finances and the economy under Andrzej Domański, the current finance minister, and the dismissal of Adam Bodnar as justice minister.

Bodnar had come under fire for the slow pace of fixing the judiciary after the previous Law and Justice (PiS) party government and prosecuting former officials facing allegations of abuse of power and corruption. This became a major cause of frustration for supporters of Tusk’s four-party coalition, which won power in late 2023.

The sense that the government was adrift was one of the factors that led to the defeat of Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate of Tusk’s Civic Platform party in the presidential election, to PiS-backed Karol Nawrocki, a right-wing hardliner.

“The time of post-election trauma ends today,” Tusk said, admitting it will be a “difficult road” for his government to regain its footing.

The big winner in the reshuffle is Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, a conservative, who now becomes a deputy prime minister. This is part of a broader shift to the right by Tusk as he tries to block the rise of PiS and the far-right Confederation party by restoring border controls to clamp down on illegal immigration.

The prime minister pledged his refreshed Cabinet will focus on “order, security, and the future,” framing these priorities in the context of “aggressive Russia and Belarus.”

“We live in a black swan reality, but we won’t let it surprise us,” Tusk said, vowing to eliminate Russian and Belarusian efforts to destabilize Poland.

Tusk also removed the health minister for not addressing the growing crisis in healthcare financing. A new ministry for energy is being created, and there are new ministers of state assets, culture and agriculture.

Sports Minister Sławomir Nitras also got the chop; he had been in charge of Trzaskowski’s failed presidential campaign.

“The government appears to have targeted areas where polls show repeated and consistent voter demand for change — or where it’s rated most poorly,” said Anna Wojciuk, a political scientist at Warsaw University.

Now that the changes have been made, the government has to clearly lay out its purpose and vision, said Adam Traczyk, executive director at More In Common, an international think tank.

“We’ve been talking about who might lose a post, who will replace whom, which ministries might be merged and so on, but all that is secondary. The real issue is what this government actually wants to achieve,” Traczyk said.

“If this new cabinet lineup doesn’t deliver meaningful results and can’t communicate a story about what it’s for, then nothing will change. We’ll just keep drifting,” Traczyk added.

A defeat for Tusk

If Trzaskowski had won, Tusk would have had an ally as president who would have approved legislation that had been stalled by the PiS-aligned incumbent, Andrzej Duda. Nawrocki, however, promises to be an even fiercer foe.

Immediately after the presidential election, Tusk called a vote of confidence in his government, but largely failed to outline a strategy ahead of the next general election scheduled for 2027.

The coalition has been bogged down in discussing the details of the reshuffle while finding itself on the back foot against PiS and the far-right opposition over issues such as migration, the rapidly rising deficit and ensuring continued support for Kyiv despite growing anti-Ukraine sentiment on the political right.

Tusk’s government was slow to react to right-wing vigilantes patrolling Poland’s border with Germany to prevent alleged readmission of illegal migrants. Dozens of anti-immigration rallies took place across Poland last week.

The government is also under fire from its own backers for failing to show determination in pushing through changes like easing Poland’s draconian abortion rules or holding PiS’s former government officials to account more effectively. 

The government enjoys the support of just 32 percent of Poles, a new monthly survey by state-run pollster CBOS showed earlier this month. Nearly half — 48 percent — said they were opposed to them.

Party polling is also bad. Tusk’s Civic Coalition is level with PiS at 31 percent, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls.

Other coalition parties are on the verge of minimum support required to win seats in parliament. Meanwhile, the far-right Confederation party is at 15 percent, giving it and PiS a potentially strong majority in the next parliament.

The new government is expected to be sworn in by Duda on Thursday.