Tusk regrets this decision to this day. “Deadly Mistake”

At the end of October, the book “The Manager” was published by Czerwone i Czarne Publishing House. The title character of the publication is Prime Minister Donald Tusk (he has been referred to in this way by his colleagues and party colleagues for years), and its author is the well-known journalist Kamil Dziubka, author of, among others, the famous “Kulisa PiS” from two years ago. This time we get to know the behind-the-scenes of the government of the current team, but in the first part of the book the author returns to the period of the final phase of the government of the “first Tusk”. Unlike his predecessors, this politician did not give up power in the aura of defeat after losing the elections (such as Jarosław Kaczyńska), or as a result of an internal crisis in his formation (such as Leszek Miller), but in the glory of promotion after being elected head of the European Council.

However, the enthusiasm surrounding the election quickly faded and questions arose as to whether, despite Tusk’s departure, his team would be able to maintain power in the elections scheduled for next year. The hero of the book himself was counting on the fact that even if Law and Justice returns to power, with President Bronisław Komorowski (a year before the elections his re-election seemed certain) he would not be able to do much and would lose the next elections, in which Tusk – freshly finished his term in the European Council – would be able to lead his party again.

Tusk wanted to introduce his 500 plus?

Today we know that everything turned out differently. In the spring of 2015, Bronisław Komorowski unexpectedly lost to the PiS candidate Andrzej Duda, and in the fall, Jarosław Kaczyński’s party won the elections with an independent majority and the 8-year phase of its rule began.

The reasons for PiS’s success often include: introduction of 500 plus and a promise to withdraw the pension reform introduced by Tusk’s government, which assumes raising and equalizing the retirement age for women and men to 67 years.

The accounts included in the book show that Tusk was thinking about introducing something like 500 plus, and PiS politicians were afraid that their opponents would introduce this type of solution during their rule.

“Former minister: The paradox is that a few days before being elected head of the European Council, Donald appeared in the Sejm and made a number of social promises, including increasing child allowances and increasing minimum pensions. And then he left Ewa Kopacz with all this. Moreover, at the very beginning of our second term, he argued that after a period of large infrastructure investments, we need to focus on the lives of ordinary people. This did not quite fit into the core of his liberal psychological and political structure, but it was consistent with the evolution that took place within him over the several years he led the government. He once said that he was a social democrat at heart, so it was supposed to go that way. Ultimately, however, nothing came of it. No bold moves in this regard have materialized.

KO politician: When Schetyna took power in the Platform in 2015, he also took control of the party’s Civic Institute. There were analyzes in the drawers, the conclusion of which was one: there is an expectation of direct financial transfers from the budget to people. Therefore, PiS’s later idea of ​​500 plus was not taken out of the blue, because they had researched it quite well. Just like us, only they benefited from this knowledge and we did not.”

Kamil Dziubka: Why did this happen?

KO politician: The Kopacz government was a cabinet that simply continued Tusk’s policy. And Donald first raised the retirement age and we paid the price for it. Especially among women. And when we later came up with some constructive proposals that the so-called ordinary citizen could benefit from, they were so complicated that they couldn’t even be explained to people in simple words. We ourselves didn’t fully understand it. And the worst thing in all this is that PiS, which already announced a proposal related to 500 plus during Duda’s campaign in 2015, was afraid that we would pay it out earlier than them, according to the principle that whoever gives first, gives twice. And we didn’t give it. We were simply mentally blocked after years of Rostowski’s rule in the Ministry of Finance, who absolutely did not agree to giving people cash. This stayed with us even after losing the parliamentary elections in 2015, when there was an internal discussion on whether to submit a bill extending 500 plus to the first child, because at the beginning the Szydło government paid money to families only from the second child. Some of us were hysterical. Janusz Lewandowski was totally pissed at us. He called people: “What are you doing?!”

Former minister: For months we said that we couldn’t give 500 plus, and when PiS came, it turned out that there was money in the budget. And it really pissed us off, because we left a surplus of several billion zlotys from the so-called auction for LTE frequencies. We laughed that 500 plus was thanks to Andrzej Halicki, who, as the Minister of Digital Affairs in our government, conducted this auction.

Increase in the retirement age in Poland. “Deadly Mistake”

Tusk’s long-time collaborator reveals that although the Prime Minister appreciated the Minister of Finance in his government, years later he regretted that he had been persuaded by Jacek Rostowski to raise the retirement age.

“He believed that from a political point of view it was a fatal mistake. But Rostowski still cannot forget that for years he said he had no money for anything. And then Kaczyński came and gave it.

When, years later, the Minister for Equality, Katarzyna Kotula, proposed equalizing the retirement age for men and women, Tusk reportedly said that he “cannot imagine being so irresponsible as to return to the topic that almost cost some people in this room their political death.”

Why did Tusk decide to increase the retirement age in 2012, at the beginning of his second term as prime minister? The former minister of his government explains that the prime minister was inspired by the pension reform carried out in Germany five years earlier.

“She envisaged a gradual increase in the retirement age and equalizing it to the level of sixty-seven. This reform is scheduled to be completed in 2031. And in our case, the year 2040 was at stake, so we are talking about a time horizon of almost thirty years. But we had a breakdown in communication on this matter.

Donald Tusk’s collaborator: Tusk – apart from raising the retirement age – had few regrets about the decisions he made when he was prime minister for the first time.

“Manager” – Kamil Dziubka, Czerwone i Czarne Publishing House, 2025.