Prime Minister Donald Tusk is nominating Agnieszka Bartol, currently Poland’s permanent representative to the European Union, as the new minister of funds and regional policy.
The head of government announced his decision before the start of Tuesday’s meeting of the Council of Ministers, Poland’s cabinet.
The post of funds minister must be filled following last week’s resignation of the ministry’s head, Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz.
“I will nominate Agnieszka Bartol. Our sherpa, ambassador, Poland’s representative to the European Union, a longtime employee of the European Council,” Tusk said. He added that she is “not only in Poland, but perhaps in Europe” the most distinguished specialist on European issues, including European funds.
The prime minister said that before making the decision on the new minister, he spoke with, among others, Deputy Sejm Speaker Szymon Hołownia, founder of Poland 2050, the party that was allotted the funds and regional policy ministry under the coalition agreement. He also consulted, among others, Deputy Prime Minister, Defense Minister and Polish People’s Party (PSL) leader Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, and Sejm Speaker and New Left leader Włodzimierz Czarzasty. The Sejm is the lower house of Poland’s parliament.
The prime minister stressed that the funds ministry needs “continuous work” so as “not to lose a single euro of the huge amount of money that their government managed to unblock.”
He said he had already accepted the resignations of Pełczyńska-Nałęcz and of Deputy Minister Jan Szyszko. At the same time, he added that on Tuesday morning he had determined that the minister’s resignation “had really nothing to do” with the government or with Pełczyńska-Nałęcz’s position in the Council of Ministers, but “rather with the affairs of Poland 2050.” He repeated that he “does not agree with the way” she carried out the decision, or with her motives. But he added: “We are all adults.”
In a Tuesday post on X, Agnieszka Bartol thanked Prime Minister Tusk for the nomination. “This is one of those moments when the awareness of responsibility matters more than the satisfaction of being singled out. Great responsibility, concrete tasks. Time to work,” she wrote.
Government spokesman Adam Szłapka, asked at a Tuesday press conference when the prime minister would send the Office of the President a request to appoint Bartol, replied: “I think today.”
Asked whether Bartol would have freedom in choosing her associates, the spokesman noted that “the selection of associates is always a function of cooperation with the minister responsible for a given area.” But, he added, the head of government takes part in it, because he appoints secretaries and undersecretaries of state on the request of the relevant minister.
“Of course, we must remember that this is a coalition government, and certainly the individual coalition parties represented in various ministries will continue to be represented. But here, I think, Minister Agnieszka Bartol will have very broad latitude in making decisions. She knows this field like few people in Poland, certainly,” the government spokesman stressed.
Asked by PAP whether Poland 2050 would receive another function in or outside the government, and who would replace Bartol, Szłapka replied: “We will return to the question of the ambassador in Brussels to the EU institutions only once Minister Agnieszka Bartol has formally taken up the post.” He added that it is too early to say who will replace her.
The government spokesman also noted that “all the changes in the government at the ministerial level that were supposed to happen were announced today by the prime minister before the cabinet meeting.” “Of course, there may be some adjustments at the deputy minister level, but as for the makeup of the Council of Ministers, no changes are planned,” Szłapka said.
Agnieszka Bartol was born in 1972 in Warsaw. She is a graduate of the University of Nancy in France and the College of Europe in Natolin. She worked at the College of Europe and at the Office of the Committee for European Integration.
In 2002 she was a member of the Secretariat of the European Convention, and she later joined the team of the Council of the EU Secretariat involved in work on the Lisbon Treaty.
She worked at the Council of the EU from 2003. From 2009 she was responsible for institutional matters and the multiannual financial framework, and she then worked on the European Council.
In 2022 she was appointed Director-General for Communication and Information at the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU. From February to October 2024 she was a secretary of state in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, and she then became Poland’s permanent representative to the EU.
Presidential spokesman Rafał Leśkiewicz said on Tuesday that the appointment of the new minister of funds and regional policy and the appointment of the finance minister as deputy prime minister will take place during a single ceremony.
“When Prime Minister Donald Tusk sends the president a request for another change in the government, the act of appointing Deputy Prime Minister Andrzej Domański and the new minister replacing Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz will take place in a single ceremony,” Leśkiewicz said.
Prime Minister Tusk announced on Wednesday that he had signed the request to the president to appoint Domański as deputy prime minister, though he signed the request on Oct. 20.
Pełczyńska-Nałęcz, the funds minister and leader of Poland 2050, announced her departure from the government on Thursday on the X platform. She wrote at the time that she was “leaving the party in the hands of its founder, who left, but nevertheless came back.” She was referring to Szymon Hołownia, deputy Sejm speaker and the party’s former leader.
On Saturday, the Poland 2050 leadership decided to expel its now-former leader from the party, among other things for acting to the detriment of the party. (PAP)
