What is the size of Donald Tusk's government after one year of his appointment? According to opposition politicians, this is “the biggest government in history”, “the biggest government after 1989”. Some commentators also point to its bloatedness. Is the current Tusk cabinet the greatest? It depends on what composition is to be calculated.
“The year of Tusk's rule is a time when the authorities have departed from reality. Byzantium, lack of moderation and indifference to the problems of ordinary Poles – this is the manifestation of this government,” PiS parliamentarian Bartos Kownacki wrote on Facebook, concluding. the year of Donald Tusk's government. Then, in a series of writings, he mentioned “Tusk's sin”, and in the fifth (out of seven) he mentioned “inactivity”. One example was: “The most powerful government in history – the establishment of the Byzantine Empire” (the original spelling of the posts). A few days ago, another PiS MP, Przemysław Drabek, wrote on the X website in a similar tone. He criticized the current government for “the biggest government since 1989”.
Internet users are also interested in the big government: “The largest number of ministers and deputy ministers in this government in the history of the Republic of Poland,” wrote one of the users of the website. Internet users themselves consider ministers and deputy ministers. “The Tusk government is the largest in history. More than 130 people,” said one internet user; “I lost count after 140 ministers,” wrote another user, X (the original spelling of all entries).
“For me, one of the weaknesses of this government is its incredible arrogance (…). In the history of the Third Republic of Poland, no government had so many ministers and no government had so many deputy ministers”, – says the political reporter. Wojciech Szatzky on the Politika Insight podcast “Nalushch”.
So is the Tusk government really “the biggest in history”? We calculated.
Council of Senior Ministers
On December 12, 2023, the Sejm elected Donald Tusk as Prime Minister and thus accepted the Council's delegation proposed by him. One day later – on December 13 – President Andrzej Duda took the oath of office of the members of the Council of Ministers.
At the time of his swearing in, the Council of Ministers of Donald Tusk consisted of 27 people. It consisted of: Prime Minister Donald Tusk; 19 heads of ministries; three ministers are members of the Council of Ministers, four ministers in the prime minister's office. This cabinet was actually the largest at the time of its creation among all those created after 1989. He even surpassed Hanna Suchocka's 25-member Council of Ministers in 1992. We described it in detail in Konkret24.
Donald Tusk's Council of Ministers was as large as Mateusz Morawiecki's cabinet, when it also had 27 members after another reshuffle in April 2023.
After one year of the government (from December 13, 2024), although the composition of the government changed several times and some politicians – for example Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz (head of the Ministry of Culture), Boris Budka (head of the State Ministry of Assets) – left and joined the European Parliament entered, the Council of Ministers still has 27 members. At one time there was one less person, but Marcin Kirwinski (the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration), who also left and joined the European Parliament, later returned to the government.
Number of Councils of Ministers 1989-2024 Concrete24
It should be noted here that we have a “second” minister in the Council of Ministers – Tomasz Siemoniak. On December 13, 2023, he became a minister, a member of the Council of Ministers and a coordinator of special services, and on May 13, 2024, he succeeded Marcin Kirwinski as the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration.
But this is not the greatest government in history
However, the government is not in the wider scope of the Council of Ministers, i.e. the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Ministers, the Ministers responsible for the Ministries, the Ministers who are members of the Council of Ministers (the so-called ministers without portfolios). They are also deputy ministers in ministries and the Prime Minister's office. Deputy Ministers (Secretaries and Under-Secretaries of State) – according to the Law on the Council of Ministers – replace constitutional ministers in their work and can present the government's position in parliamentary sessions. They are appointed by the Prime Minister at the request of the relevant minister.
When after a few months of the Tusk government – in late August and September 2024 – we looked again at the government, we counted 89 deputy ministers in the prime minister's office and ministries. Therefore, at that time the government consisted of 115 people. How is it now a year since the inauguration of the government?
We have re-analyzed the personnel provided on the websites of the Prime Minister's Office and ministries. We established that now there are 90 deputy ministers in the entire government. The largest number – eight people are in the prime minister's office; seven people in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Finance; There are six deputy ministers in the Ministry of Climate and Environment.
There are now 117 people in Donald Tusk's government. Is it the “most in history”? NO.
The response of the US Secretary of State in the Office of the Prime Minister Grzegorz Schreiber to the comments of the representative Krzysztof Breza, submitted in July 2018, shows that at the end of 2017, the government of Mateusz Morawiecki had 20 ministers and 101 deputy ministers. In total, this makes 121 members of the government.
Entry by Krzysztof Breza: ministers and deputy ministers in governments since 1997 Twitter
In turn, in his speech on March 5, 2018, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that 126 people work as ministers and deputy ministers.
Where did the numbers “more than 130” and 140, which the Internet users wrote about, come from? The first appeared in the entry of Konfederacja in October and the graphic published in it. – Instead of 100 concrete… 130 members of the government! – given This is most likely taken from an article in “Gazeta Wyborcza”, which, when counting government members, includes people who are not ministers or deputy ministers: “In total, the whole government consists of about 134 people, if we include directors including general ministries or persons with additional duties (for example, the chief of staff of the Polish Armed Forces or the head of the cabinet), who are also part of the leadership of the ministries.
“140 members of the government”, “140 ministers” or “140 deputy ministers” are mainly written by anonymous users of the X website, using this number to attack political opponents or heat up the debate. We have not found any reliable sources that use it.
Main photo source: Paweł Supernak/PAP
