Warsaw, 11 December 2023 (dpa/MIA) - Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki's Cabinet lost a parliamentary vote of confidence on Monday, as expected, opening the way for centrist opposition leader Donald Tusk to take power.

Only 190 lawmakers in the lower house voted in favour of Morawiecki's nationalist-conservative government, while 266 voted against.

Parliament is expected to quickly ask Tusk, the leader of the Civic Platform (PO) party, to form a government.

The PO and its pro-EU allies emerged as the clear winners in the October 15 elections, taking 248 seats in the 460-member lower house, the Sejm, well ahead of the 194 taken by Morawiecki's conservative, nationalist and populist Law and Justice Party (PiS).

Tusk's three-way alliance has already signed a coalition agreement and decided on how the portfolios will be divided up in a new Cabinet. PiS was never able to find coalition partners.

President Andrzej Duda, a former PiS member, used his office to delay the switch for as long as possible, tasking Morawiecki with forming a doomed government after the elections and swearing in his Cabinet at the end of November - despite the absence of a PiS-led majority.

Under the constitution, the incoming prime minister must seek a vote of confidence from the Sejm within 14 days. Morawiecki failed it on Monday.

The PiS won an outright majority in the 2015 elections and has been in power for eight years.

The new government is set to bring changes in Poland's foreign policy and put an end to long-running conflict with Brussels, primarily on account of reforms to the judicial system introduced by the PiS.

Relations with Poland's powerful western neighbour, Germany, also hit a low after demands from Poland for war reparations of €1.3 trillion ($1.4 trillion).

Tusk, prime minister of Poland between 2007 and 2014, and president of the European Council between 2014 and 2019, will seek to mend relations with both the EU and Germany and to put greater distance between Poland and Hungary, another EU member in conflict with Brussels.

Photo: MIA archive