In Poland, the right-wing conservative opposition party PiS collapsed after a dispute over its direction. Former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has to leave the party after a power struggle against party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
July 25, 2026, 11:37 amJuly 25, 2026, 11:37 am
According to Morawiecki, 40 MPs are going. He left it open whether he wanted to found his own party. What is going on in the once powerful party that ruled Poland from 2015 to 2023, rebuilt the country according to its ideas and led it into a constant clinch with the EU?
Conflict over direction: even further to the right – or more to the center?
The core of the conflict was the question of the future direction of the party. In March, Kaczynski named the right-wing hardliner Przemyslaw Czarnek as his candidate for prime minister in the parliamentary elections scheduled for fall 2027. In doing so, he wanted to make the PiS attractive to voters of right-wing radical parties.
The economically liberal ex-banker Morawiecki, who was head of government from 2017 to 2023, felt duped by Czarnek’s nomination. With other moderate PiS politicians he founded a group called “Development Plus”. The PiS must again become “a large camp of the Polish right and center-right parties,” demanded Morawiecki.
But Kaczynski issued an ultimatum: the group had to disband and all members had to sign a declaration of loyalty. Morawiecki let the ultimatum pass. “We couldn’t allow ourselves to be forced to sign declarations of loyalty,” he said now. This sealed the expulsion.
According to party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, “more than 30 MPs” around Morawiecki are said to have resigned their membership in the PiS.Image: keystone
Kaczynski calls it “end of membership,” Morawiecki “intrigue.”
Now there are two versions of how exactly the split came about – and how many PiS MPs are leaving. According to party leader Kaczynski, “more than 30 MPs” around Morawiecki have resigned their membership in the PiS. The party council will take note of this fact on Tuesday.
Kaczynski continued that every member of parliament knew the consequences of not signing the declaration of loyalty. The PiS has so far made up the largest faction in the Polish parliament with 186 members.
Mateusz Morawiecki.Image: keystone
Morawiecki, on the other hand, accused his internal party opponents and the leadership of intrigue and blackmail. “Dear schemers, perhaps that was exactly what you intended: to force us out of the PiS,” he said. That sounded more like a physical expulsion. He stated the number of his supporters as 40 MPs. The 58-year-old emphasized that they fought for the unity of the party until the very end.
Generational conflict: The end of the “Kaczynski solar system”
Morawiecki’s resistance to Kaczynski made it clear to many Poles: the 77-year-old “Prezes”, who founded the PiS in 2001 with his twin brother Lech, no longer has his party under control. «The PiS was a solar system in which everything revolved around Kaczynski. “He distributed prestige, list positions and material benefits,” analyzes journalist Rafal Kalukin from the magazine “Polityka.”
But this model has had its day. “Individual groups are focused on themselves and are waiting for the moment when Kaczynski enters Poland’s political history.” At a time when politicians react to trends on social media in the morning, no one pays attention to the party leader’s instructions anymore.
Right-wing radical parties on the rise
What’s also causing problems for the PiS is that it is currently being overtaken by the right. Their poll numbers are 23 percent – that’s 12 percentage points less than in the 2023 parliamentary election. The right-wing radical Konfederacja of the young entrepreneur Slawomir Mentzen (12.4 percent) and the formation of the anti-Semite Grzegorz Braun (9.6 percent) get almost as much. Both are particularly popular among young male voters in rural areas.
The PiS achieved a great success when the non-party Karol Nawrocki, who it supported, won the 2025 presidential election. But the 47-year-old former boxer with fashionably short hair is now so popular among young right-wingers that many of them see Nawrocki as a leading figure rather than the aging Kaczynski or his minions.
Is Donald Tusk’s government the laughing third party?
Prime Minister Donald Tusk reacted to the PiS’s problems with ridicule. “They are fighting for the unity of the party in such a way that no stone is left unturned,” he wrote on
But Tusk’s liberal-conservative Citizens’ Coalition (KO) cannot afford to get out the popcorn and make itself comfortable on the government sofa. The collapse of the PiS, which has been the most important political opponent for 25 years, is a problem for the KO – especially since the 69-year-old party leader Tusk, like his political arch-enemy Kaczynski, belongs to a generation of politicians whose era is ending.
Furthermore: There are signs of a fragmentation of the political landscape in Poland with growing support for right-wing radical formations. This trend could pose a threat to Tusk’s center-left alliance in the next parliamentary election. PiS breakaway Morawiecki is no consolation: He has already declared that his formation will not enter into a coalition with any of the current government parties. (sda/dpa)