Donald Tusk
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Donald Franciszek Tusk (born 22 April 1957) is a Polish politician and historian who has served as the prime minister of Poland since 2023, previously holding the office from 2007 to 2014. Tusk was President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019 and led the European People's Party from 2019 to 2022. He co-founded the Civic Platform (PO), one of the dominant Polish political parties, and has been its longtime leader – from 2003 to 2014 and again from 2021 to 2025, when it merged into the Civic Coalition (KO) party. He is the longest-serving prime minister of the Third Polish Republic. Tusk has been officially involved in politics since 1989, having co-founded multiple political parties, such as the free market–oriented Liberal Democratic Congress party (KLD). He first entered the Sejm in 1991 but lost his seat in 1993. In 1994, the KLD merged with the Democratic Union to form the Freedom Union. In 1997, Tusk was elected to the Senate and became its deputy marshal. In 2001, he co-founded another centre-right liberal conservative party, the PO, and was again elected to the Sejm, becoming its deputy marshal. Tusk stood unsuccessfully for President of Poland in the 2005 election and would also suffer defeat in the 2005 Polish parliamentary election. Leading the PO to victory at the 2007 parliamentary election, he was appointed prime minister, and scored a second victory in the 2011 election, becoming the first Polish prime minister to be re-elected since the fall of communism in 1989. In 2014, he left Polish politics to accept appointment as president of the European Council. The Civic Platform would lose control of both the presidency and parliament to the rival Law and Justice (PiS) party in the 2015 Polish presidential election and 2015 Polish parliamentary election. Tusk was President of the European Council until 2019; although initially remaining in Brussels as leader of the EPP, he later returned to Polish politics in 2021, becoming leader of the Civic Platform again. In the 2023 election, his Civic Coalition won 157 seats in the Sejm to become the second-largest bloc in the chamber. Following the president-appointed prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki's failure to secure a vote of confidence on 11 December, Tusk was elected by the Sejm to become prime minister for a third time. His cabinet was sworn in on 13 December, ending eight years of government by the PiS party. Having been the longest-serving prime minister of the Third Republic, Tusk oversaw in his first term the reduction and digitization of the public sector, wishing to present himself as a pragmatic liberal realist and technocrat. In the lead-up to the co-organization by Poland of Euro 2012, he invested strongly in infrastructure, expanding the highway network at the cost of the rail sector. In his second term, various scandals, unfulfilled promises and a cooling of the economy in 2012–2014 as his European debt crisis-related austerity policies led to a drop in public support. In the landscape dominated by the PiS after its electoral victories, as an influential holdout he opposed what he considered its democratic backsliding. Returning to power in 2023, he has focused on reforming the judiciary and warming relations between Poland and the EU. Since then, as PM, Tusk has continued aid to Ukraine after the Russian invasion. In 2024, he surprised the public with his appropriation of right-wing themes, such as opposition to illegal migration, prioritizing border security, going as far as to suspend the right of asylum for those who illegally cross the Belarus–Poland border.