How Poland's largest opposition party is splitting and why this is good news for Ukraine

On 24 July, Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s opposition party Law and Justice (PiS), announced the removal of 30 members from the party.

This is truly a landmark event. Poland’s largest right-wing party, which for nearly two decades had remained a unified and tightly controlled force under the influence of its co-founders – Lech (until his tragic death in 2010) and Jarosław Kaczyński – failed to find a way out of its internal crisis and split into two factions.

The "rebels" are a genuinely large group of senior party figures aligned with former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Read more about what is happening inside Poland’s largest right-wing party, as well as the possible consequences of the split, including for Ukraine, in the article by Yurii Panchenko, co-founder of European Pravda, and international affairs expert Stanislav Zhelihovskyi: A split in Ukraine’s favour: how Poland’s PiS lost part of its MPs and what happens next.

The crisis between former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński had been building for a long time. However, it fully surfaced and escalated to its current level after the party leadership decided to nominate not Morawiecki, who sought the role, but Przemysław Czarnek – one of the leaders of the rival faction within the party – as PiS’s candidate for prime minister.

Formally, the decision was made collectively, but in reality Czarnek won the internal contest because he was backed by the party leader. In PiS, key decisions are ultimately made by Kaczyński.

Moreover, in recent weeks, due to Czarnek’s obvious failures, including those caused by his excessively radical anti-Ukrainian statements, the party had already begun considering replacing its candidate.

However, given how sharply the confrontation between Kaczyński and Morawiecki had intensified, the former prime minister no longer had any chance of receiving a new nomination for the post.

Przemysław Czarnek personally accused Morawiecki of causing the split.

It should be noted that former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki created "Development Plus", an association within the party that publicly presented its programme for Poland’s economic development shortly before the party congress.

When PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński issued an ultimatum stating that participation in political groups operating alongside the official party structures was unacceptable, Morawiecki’s team refused to comply.

Although Morawiecki did not directly announce the creation of a new political project, many of his statements clearly pointed in that direction.

His optimism is not without grounds. A poll conducted by IBRiS shows that if Morawiecki’s party (which currently exists only as a hypothetical project) ran separately for seats in the Sejm, it could receive 6.9% of the vote, comfortably passing Poland’s 5% electoral threshold.

The ruling coalition led by Donald Tusk welcomed the news enthusiastically.

"I love the PiS party so much that I would like there to be at least two of them," joked Polish Foreign Minister and Tusk ally Radosław Sikorski.

Meanwhile, the PiS split creates an entirely new political reality that Poland has not experienced since around the mid-2000s.

And it will have far-reaching consequences.

At first glance, losing its status as the dominant force on the Polish right could strengthen the position of President Karol Nawrocki, which would not be particularly good news for Ukraine.

On the other hand, the politicians within PiS who are considered the most supportive of Ukraine have left the party together with Mateusz Morawiecki. Ultimately, although Morawiecki himself does not have any particular sympathy for Ukraine, he will be forced to defend the policies of his governments, including their support for Kyiv.

The split in PiS marks the end of the last two decades, during which Polish politics was shaped by the rivalry between Tusk’s and Kaczyński’s parties, while all other political forces played only secondary roles.

From now on, Polish politics will become more fragmented and unpredictable.