This result comes as no surprise. Tusk’s aim was to demonstrate that he has a stable majority in the parliament – and he’s done just that. He will hope the vote puts to rest any speculation about the government’s future and rallies his coalition partners to get on with the legislative agenda. Still, the debate was, at times, very bruising for him personally and his government, and won’t do much to help with his ratings in itself. If Tusk wants to recover from last month’s presidential defeat, he will need more. Much more. A cabinet reshuffle is expected in July, with new faces likely to join the ranks as the government regroups ahead of the inauguration of Karol Nawrocki, the incoming president from the opposition Law and Justice party, in August. It may only be June 2025, but the battle to retain power in the 2027 parliamentary elections has already begun – and it won’t be easy. 243 in favour, 210 against. Here we go. Just a reminder that you can follow our live stream here: Wrapping up, Tusk repeatedly criticises the opposition for repeating “a bunch of lies” about his government, and then fairly abruptly ends his speech. And that’s it. We’re going to vote on a few administrative proposals first, but then it’s the big one – the vote of confidence in Tusk’s government. Going through the questions, Tusk praises his government’s track record on healthcare, including the restoration of public funding for in vitro fertilisation treatment and on keeping the Polish border secure. Notably, he also takes a shot at the new German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, saying it’s “possible” that Poland could re-introduce at least partial controls on that border with Germany as early as this summer in response to Berlin’s actions. The German government stepped up its border controls with its neighbours, including Poland, in recent months, prompting criticism that its actions violated the EU’s Schengen area rules on the free movement of people and goods. “I have warned the new government of chancellor Merz that … we will be very critical … about any attempt to send any migrants back to Poland,” he said. Tusk also uses strong language on migration, highlighting his government’s controversial decision to suspend the option to make asylum claims on Poland’s border with Belarus, and promising a further crackdown on visas, including a push to suspend visa-free movement with Georgia. Meanwhile, as the session continued in the background, far-right MEP Grzegorz Braun vandalised an LGBTQ+ exhibition on display in the Polish parliament’s corridors, Polish media reported. Braun, who came fourth in last month’s presidential election with 6.3% of the vote, is perhaps best known internationally for using a fire extinguisher to douse the candles of a Hanukkah menorah in parliament in January. Following that incident, he was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and remains under investigation. All questions have now been asked, so it’s over to Polish PM Tusk to respond now. The vote will follow. If you’re wondering what’s the latest in the Polish debate, a PiS lawmaker, Zbigniew Dolata, just finished his question (?) addressing prime minister Donald Tusk with a command in German: “Herr Tusk, raus!” (Mr Tusk, out!). Tusk is not even in the chamber. So, yeah, the Q&A is still going strong. As per speaker Hołownia’s comments earlier (14:02), there will be a brief break before Tusk starts responding to questions, and only then we will proceed to the main vote. So it may take a while. I will keep you posted. Eleni Courea and Sam Jones The UK and Gibraltar are on the brink of an agreement which would see Eurostar-style dual border controls implemented at the territory’s airport. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, and Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar’s chief minister, are meeting EU and Spanish negotiators in Brussels today in a bid to get the deal over the line. The UK and Spain have been engaged in on-off negotiations for four years over Gibraltar’s land border with Spain. The talks have been focused on allowing free movement between two territories by seeing Gibraltar enter the EU’s passport-free Schengen area. Under the terms of the agreement being thrashed out on Wednesday, travellers arriving at Gibraltar airport would show their passports to British and Spanish border officers. The system would mirror the one in place for Eurostar travellers at St Pancras airport, where travellers go through British and French passport control before boarding trains to the continent. Lammy and Picardo are due to meet Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice-president, and José Manuel Albares, the Spanish minister for foreign affairs, in Brussels on Wednesday in a bid to finalise the deal. British and Gibraltarian ministers held a meeting on Wednesday morning “to agree final parameters for negotiation”, Picardo said on X on Wednesday. French police have arrested several people suspected of involvement in last month’s kidnapping of the father of a wealthy cryptocurrency entrepreneur, a source close to the case said Wednesday. AFP reported that the suspects, apprehended on Tuesday according to the source, are believed to have been part of an attempt to extort funds from a wealthy man by abducting his father. On 1 May, he was taken in Paris’s southern 14th arrondissement in broad daylight by four men wearing ski masks who bundled him into a delivery van as passers-by looked on. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of several million euros and cut off one of the man’s fingers. He was freed days later by a police tactical unit who stormed the house in a Paris suburb where he was being held. Poland’s Tusk is not the only European prime minister who is facing domestic pressure. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez faced a new legal setback on Wednesday as a court ordered an investigation into a potential conflict of interest related to his government’s financial bailout of Air Europa, AFP reported. The ruling came a day after the supreme court found that Spain’s top prosecutor – a government appointee – might have breached judicial secrecy in another case, potentially paving the way for a trial. It also follows separate corruption investigations involving Sanchez’s wife, his brother, and a former close aide. Madrid’s high court said it had directed the civil service ministry’s Office for Conflicts of Interest to investigate whether Sanchez should have recused himself from a 2020 Cabinet meeting that approved a EUR475 million bailout for Air Europa during the Covid-19 pandemic. Polish Sejm speaker Szymon Hołownia has just confirmed there is a delay to the main vote, which is now expected around 4pm (3pm BST). The record-high number of over 280 MPs have registered to ask questions in the course of the debate, he says. That’s over 60% of all MPs (!). I hope you will excuse me for not bringing you a blow-by-blow report on this debate, but the latest question was about the sports sponsorship choices of a state-owned sugar producer, so… I will let you know when Tusk is back to respond to all questions and when we get closer to the vote. I really hope someone is making notes for Tusk, because he is no longer in the chamber either – and yet he is somehow expected to respond to these (260+) questions at the end of this bloc. An Estonian court on Wednesday said it had sentenced a journalist who used to work for Russian state media to six years in prison for treason, AFP reported. The court found that Svetlana Burceva had worked with a reserve officer of Russia’s FSB security service in “activities against the independence and sovereignty” of Estonia. “The sentence was six years in prison,” the Harju county district court said in a statement. A concentrated, nine-minute-long Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkiv in the middle of the night killed three people and injured 64, including nine children, Ukrainian officials said. Reuters reported the overnight attack followed Russia’s two biggest air assaults of the war on Ukraine this week, part of intensified bombardments that Moscow said were retaliatory measures for Kyiv’s recent attacks in Russia. Two men have been sentenced to life in prison for supplying the car bomb that killed the anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta eight years ago. The sentencing on Tuesday of Robert Agius and Jamie Vella, reported to be members of the island’s criminal underworld, marked a significant step in the long campaign to bring those charged with Caruana Galizia’s murder to justice. Her death in October 2017 sparked outrage across Europe and embroiled Malta’s governing party in accusations of a coverup, ultimately leading to the resignation of the then prime minister, Joseph Muscat. Prosecutors have brought charges against seven people, including a millionaire businessman who is still awaiting trial. Agius and Vella, who had pleaded not guilty, were sentenced after their conviction on Friday last week. Jurors returned an 8-1 verdict after a trial that lasted more than six weeks. A landmark court decision has dealt a blow to the far-right movement in Greece after MPs with the neo-fascist Spartans party were deprived of seats in parliament. Citing electoral fraud, a specially assembled electoral tribunal stripped three of the group’s lawmakers, including its leader, of their status in a move that, for the first time since the collapse of military rule, leaves Athens’ 300-seat parliament operating with just 297 MPs. In an unprecedented step, judges ruled that voters had been “deceived” in general elections two years ago because, although Vasilis Stigkas was described as the party leader, there was another person pulling the strings: Ilias Kasidiaris, an unrepentant neo-Nazi and former leader of the now disbanded Golden Dawn. Parties in Greece legally cannot run in elections if their “real leaders” have been convicted of crimes such as participating in a criminal organisation. The Polish debate is, so far, going along the usual party lines, so let’s take a moment to bring you some updates from elsewhere in Europe instead. There are about 260 questions to Tusk, one minute each, so it may take a while. Hope he is making comprehensive notes. If you want to follow the Polish parliamentary debate on Tusk’s government live, you can do it here: But if you don’t speak Polish, don’t worry: I will bring you all the key updates here. Back to Poland, Tusk moves on to outline his plans for the future. He says that, assuming they win the vote today, the government will appoint a spokesperson in June to “overhaul” its communications (until now Tusk played that role as the PM) with a broader political reshuffle to follow in July. He says the government has a number of draft laws ready to go, including new rule of law reforms and a broader deregulation push. He urges his MPs to show discipline and get behind the government’s plans to regain the momentum ahead of the 2027 parliamentary election. “I’m counting on the fact that these nearly two and a half years without elections are a unique moment. Two and a half years without all that bickering. Two and a half years without constantly hitting each other over the head. That’s a lot of time,” he says. And after around an hour, that’s it. We will move to Q&A next. The key vote is expected around 2pm local (1pm BST). You can watch the minute of silence in Graz here: Austria and Graz are about to stop for a minute of silence to pay tribute to 10 people killed in a school shooting yesterday by a 21-year-old former student. Nine people died on scene, and another one died in hospital. The attacker shot himself on scene. Further 11 people were seriously injured and remain in hospitals. For context and some balance, the latest CBOS poll from late May showed that 44% voters opposed the government, with 32% expressing their support, 20% taking neutral position, and 4% undecided. 52% were unhappy with the government’s track record, with 35% happy, and 13% undecided. Asked about Tusk personally, 53% has a negative view of the prime minister, 35% – positive, and 12% had no opinion on him. Tusk says his government struggled to communicate its successes to the public, as he lists some key achievements. “If we told our story even half as well as we actually governed, we would be winning election after election,” he says. He says his government increased defence spending by 67% and stepped up the security of Poland’s eastern border with Belarus. He also says the new administration stopped the previous government’s alleged large-scale abuses of the visa regime by introducing more stringent checks, which led to a drop in the number of visas issued to residents of Asian and African countries by 50%. He then goes on to laud the government’s track record with social transfers. Tusk starts by saying he wants to “get straight to the point” as “this is not a day for long, flowery speeches”. He says that the result of the presidential election makes it clear that the government will face “greater challenges than we expected”. “This is not an earthquake, but let’s call things for what they are: we are facing two and a half years of very hard … work in [political] conditions that are not going to improve,” he admits. But he insists the coalition still “has the mandate to govern” it received in 2023, reaffirmed by over 10m votes for the government’s candidate at the presidential election two weeks ago. He acknowledges “impatience, sometimes disappointment or anger” among voters, and says the government needs to take responsibility for the defeat and “not … offer excuses”, but show a plan for the road ahead. Tusk mischievously notes the absence of PiS MPs, joking his government clearly has a clear majority in the house today. Tusk is starting his speech now. Curiously, most MPs from the main opposition party, Law and Justice, are not in the chamber. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk will face a vote of confidence in parliament this afternoon as he seeks to bounce back from his party’s presidential election defeat two weeks ago. Warsaw centrist mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, Tusk’s deputy in the Civic Platform party, unexpectedly lost the presidency to right-wing populist Karol Nawrocki, backed by the opposition Law and Justice party, sparking questions over the government’s future. Unusually, the vote was called by Tusk himself in a bid to shore up his fragile coalition, demonstrate a clear political mandate to govern, and reset the narrative ahead of the 2027 parliamentary election. But the build up to today’s vote revealed bitter personal and ideological divisions and disagreements within the coalition, as leading politicians publicly blamed each other for the government’s shortcomings and poor delivery on their flagship promises. The government, which came to power in late 2023, promised to reverse the erosion of democratic checks and balances that had marked the eight-year rule of the Law and Justice party (PiS). But it faced a politically hostile presidency in the conservative incumbent, Andrzej Duda, who yielded the blocking power of veto. With Nawrocki elected for a five-year term, the government has to learn how to live with a difficult president or face a complete paralysis. On paper, the governing coalition has a clear majority in the Sejm, with 242 MPs in the 460-seat chamber. But some government lawmakers indicated they were not happy with the prime minister, and would like to see radical changes in the top team and its priorities. Others were reportedly approached by PiS leaders looking for an alternative, right-wing majority in the parliament. What could possibly go wrong. Tusk is scheduled to kick the debate off shortly, with the main vote expected around 2pm Warsaw time (1pm BST). I will bring you all the key updates here. It’s Wednesday, 11 June 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live. Good morning.
Author: Jakub Krupa