{"id":18344,"date":"2026-07-24T16:41:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T16:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/18344\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T16:41:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T16:41:14","slug":"polands-biggest-opposition-party-faces-a-split","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/18344\/","title":{"rendered":"Poland’s biggest opposition party faces a split"},"content":{"rendered":"

WARSAW, Poland (AP) \u2014 Poland\u2019s main opposition party faces a split in a disagreement over its future direction, with the party leader saying Friday that more than 30 lawmakers have effectively left.<\/p>\n

The conservative nationalist Law and Justice party ran Poland from 2015 to 2023, when the current liberal government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk took power. During that time, it tightened control over the courts<\/a> by appointing loyalist judges to higher courts and punishing critics with disciplinary action. <\/p>\n

The Tusk government\u2019s efforts to reverse those changes have repeatedly been blocked<\/a> by two successive presidents sympathetic to Law and Justice.<\/p>\n

Still, tensions within Law and Justice have simmered as a national election next year approaches, and it faces a challenge from parties further to its right. <\/p>\n

Longtime leader Jaros\u0142aw Kaczy\u0144ski and Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland\u2019s prime minister from 2017 to 2023, have been at the center of the spat. Morawiecki represents a relatively moderate faction and in April set up an association called Development Plus, which many in the party view with suspicion.<\/p>\n

A deadline for lawmakers to commit not to be members of other political associations expired Thursday night. A meeting Thursday between Kaczy\u0144ski and Morawiecki failed to resolve their differences.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Kaczy\u0144ski said that, as a result, more than 30 lawmakers had resigned from their membership of the party, Polish news agency PAP reported. He said the party\u2019s political committee will meet on Tuesday to acknowledge that. <\/p>\n

Piotr M\u00fcller, a European Parliament lawmaker for Law and Justice and Morawiecki supporter, contradicted the party leadership. He wrote on X that no party members who were in Development Plus had actually resigned from Law and Justice.<\/p>\n

Morawiecki said Friday that he and other members of his association haven\u2019t yet discussed the formation of any new party, and said that \u201cwe have to discuss all plans for the future,\u201d PAP reported. <\/p>\n

Law and Justice has 186 seats in the 460-seat Sejm, the lower house of parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WARSAW, Poland (AP) \u2014 Poland\u2019s main opposition party faces a split in a disagreement over its future direction,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[732,64,362,329,330,11921,9,479,122,331],"class_list":["post-18344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-conservatism","tag-donald-tusk","tag-elections","tag-general-news","tag-international-news","tag-piotr-mller","tag-poland","tag-poland-government","tag-politics","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}