Poland's Law and Justice Party Splits, Weakening Conservative Opposition to PM Tusk

WARSAW — The nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party that ruled Poland from 2015 to 2023 split on Friday in a political rupture that undermines the conservative camp’s attempts to topple pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk in an election next year.

After the victory of conservative Karol Nawrocki in the presidential election of May 2025, PiS hoped it would build momentum toward a return to government in 2027. That prospect raised alarm in Brussels given PiS’s long track record of confrontation with the EU over issues such as the rule of law and LGBTQ+ rights.

But the party has been weakening in the polls since last fall and has been rocked by a battle over its political trajectory and succession between iron-fisted party leader Jarosław Kaczyński and former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

That clash at the top boiled over on Friday when Kaczyński expelled Morawiecki and some three dozen MPs for refusing to abandon an internal grouping in PiS that has been widely seen as Morawiecki’s attempt to build his own splinter party.

Kaczyński announced the expulsion after a midnight deadline he had given Morawiecki and his group to sign loyalty declarations.

“Everyone knew what they were supposed to sign and at the same time everyone knew what the consequences of not signing were. And so they made the decision they made,” Kaczyński told a press briefing at PiS’s headquarters in Warsaw.

Morawiecki’s allies are now expected to establish a separate caucus in the Polish parliament, the 460-seat Sejm.

The departure of Morawiecki’s followers is going to reduce its parliamentary contingent to 140-145 seats, making it the second-biggest caucus after Tusk’s Civic Coalition.

While PiS was ahead of Civic Coalition in polls last fall, support has now dropped to 26 percent, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, behind the Civic Coalition on 32 percent.

This weakness in the polls is likely to be exacerbated by the split, as conservative and nationalist voters will now be divided among Kaczyński’s party, two far-right formations and Morawiecki’s group, which is seen as the most moderate of the pack.

Despite the rupture on the right, though, Tusk’s Civic Coalition could still struggle to build a coalition that will be bigger than the combined forces of the right.

The immediate confrontation inside PiS began on July 15, when the leadership ordered members to leave associations conducting political activity and submit declarations by midnight July 23.

Members who refused faced expulsion. Morawiecki and his backers spent the countdown to the deadline assuring media their future lay within PiS and that their goal was to broaden the party’s appeal to voters outside the core radical right-wing demographic.

Kaczyński selected hardline former Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek as the party’s candidate for prime minister in March, apparently sidelining Morawiecki and his strategy of rebuilding support among centrist and business-oriented voters.

Morawiecki created his association, known as Rozwój Plus (Development Plus), in mid-April. He has presented it as a platform for economic, technological and demographic policy rather than a future party.

Kaczyński and Morawiecki announced a compromise on April 21 under which Rozwój Plus would operate through a new PiS expert council. Morawiecki nevertheless went on to formally register the association in May.

Morawiecki also chairs the European Conservatives and Reformists Party.

A splashy Rozwój Plus gathering — with discussion panels and policy speeches throughout the day — is planned for July 31 in Warsaw.

Paweł Jabłoński, a Morawiecki ally and former deputy foreign minister who met Kaczyński this week in a failed attempt to negotiate a compromise, told POLITICO he regretted the split but stressed the common adversary was still Tusk.

“I regret that it came to this, that we were thrown out. It’s not that anyone resigned from anything. We were simply thrown out of the party for trying to broaden it,” he said.

“Collapse, rupture — that may be too big a word. It’s a division that the party leadership chose,” he added. “In my view, the political opponent is still Donald Tusk and his government.”

Bartosz Brzeziński contributed reporting.