Prime Minister (2017–2023)
In December 2017, Jarosław Kaczyński, the Chairman of the Law and Justice party, declared that he no longer had confidence in Beata Szydło to be the party's prime ministerial candidate, in part due to perceived conflict between her and other European Union leaders. With her position untenable, Szydło resigned, and Morawiecki quickly won internal party approval to be nominated as her successor. He was sworn in as prime minister of Poland on 11 December, immediately appointing Szydło as his deputy. In his first major address to Sejm, he pledged "continuity" rather than radical change.
In January 2018, following a highly public racist incident in Warsaw, Morawiecki declared: "There is no place in Poland for racism. The attack on a girl because of her skin color deserves the strongest condemnation. We shall do everything to make Poland safe for everyone."
At the Munich Security Conference on 17 February that year, Morawiecki said "it is not going to be seen as criminal to say that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators, as there were Russian perpetrators, as there were Ukrainian perpetrators, not only German perpetrators." His remark roused controversy and prompted criticism by prominent Israeli politicians, including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. The crisis was resolved in late June that year when the Polish and Israeli prime ministers issued a joint communiqué endorsing research into the Jewish Holocaust and condemning the expression, "Polish concentration camps".
As other Visegrád Group leaders, Morawiecki opposes any compulsory EU long-term quota on redistribution of migrants. In May 2018, Morawiecki said: "Proposals by the European Union that impose quotas on us hit the very foundations of national sovereignty."
In July 2018, Morawiecki said he "will not rest" until "the whole truth" of the World War II-era massacres in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia has been explained. Between 1942 and 1945, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) killed up to 100,000 civilians in what is now Western Ukraine.
On the issue of Brexit, Morawiecki told the BBC in January 2019 that more and more Polish people are returning to Poland from the UK and he hoped the trend would continue to help boost the Polish economy.
In January 2019, Morawiecki said that "Hitler's Germany fed on fascist ideology... But all the evil came from this (German) state and we cannot forget that, because otherwise we relativise evil." Morawiecki wants Germany to pay World War II reparations for the destruction it caused during World War II. In August 2019, he said that "Poland has yet to receive proper compensation from Germany… We lost six million people over the course of the war — many more than did countries that received major reparations."
On 13 October 2019, Morawiecki led PiS to a re-election victory in that year's parliamentary election. PiS won its highest ever vote in a parliamentary election to date, taking in 43.6% of the national vote and retaining majority government. At the first sitting of the Sejm of the 9th term, he resigned from the Council of Ministers (pursuant to Article 162(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland), which was accepted by the President on the same day.
On 15 September 2020, the Voivodeship administrative court in Warsaw ruled that the decision of Morawiecki to hold the elections only by postal vote on 10 May 2020 was a "gross violation of the law and was issued without [legal] grounds" and violated article 7 of the Polish Constitution, article 157, paragraph 1 and article 187, paragraph 1 and 2 of the Electoral Code. The opposition demanded Morawiecki's resignation.
In October 2021, Morawiecki accused the European Union of blackmail over several issues. However, he downplayed the possibility of a "Polexit" and said that the threat of economic sanctions was a "direct challenge". In July 2021, he became the vice-president of Law and Justice.
In November 2021, Polish security forces made headlines for turning away migrants at the Belarusian border. They used tear gas and water cannons to deter migrants rioting and destroying border fencing in an attempt to access the EU by crossing into Poland. According to the Associated Press, Poland's strong stance on illegal and irregular migration was largely met with approval from other European nations hoping to avoid another migrant crisis.
In December 2021, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came to Warsaw for talks with Morawiecki. They discussed Poland’s dispute with the EU over the rule of law, the long-term EU climate policies and the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which would bring Russian gas to Germany and bypass Poland. Morawiecki said "we do not want people to suffer as a result" of EU's Green Deal, accusing the bloc's Emissions Trading System of contributing to the 2021 global energy crisis. From 10 February to 26 April 2022, he performed the duties of the Minister of Finance after the dismissal of Tadeusz Kościński.
Morawiecki was one of the first European leaders to call for sanctions against Russia, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, calling the invasion a "crime" and "an act of barbarism". He travelled to Brussels for an emergency meeting of the European Council and called for freezing Russian assets, cutting Russia off from SWIFT and blocking Nord Stream 2. He was one of the first European leaders to support sending military equipment to Ukraine, which he did himself as Prime Minister. He also opened the Polish border to Ukrainian refugees, which led to about 2.1 million refugees entering the country in March 2022. Morawiecki's uncompromising support for military aid to Ukraine was met with backlash from some far-right and nationalistic politicians, such as Krzysztof Bosak.
In January 2023, Morawiecki said he supported the death penalty.
In February 2023, as the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine entered its second year, Morawiecki told Hungarian President Katalin Novák in a formal meeting at the Bucharest Nine summit in Warsaw that "We must prepare for years-long deterrence and defence against the Russian threat."
In February 2023, Morawiecki said that Poland would "use its own good relations" with Turkey under Erdoğan to persuade it "to the fastest possible, and preferably concurrent, accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO."
In March 2023, he visited Saudi Arabia and met with Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman.
In March 2023, after General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping's three-day visit to Russia, Morawiecki expressed concern about a "dangerous" China-Russian alliance. On 14 April after the visit of Emmanuel Macron to Beijing, where he met CCP general secretary Xi Jinping and caused alarm in Washington because he spoke of France's "sovereign autonomy", Morawiecki went there and read a prepared paper to a diplomatic audience. In those remarks he said that "You can not protect Ukraine today and tomorrow by saying that Taiwan is none of our business. You have to support Ukraine if you want Taiwan to remain independent. If Ukraine is conquered, the next day China can attack Taiwan. I see here a very big connection, a lot of correlation between the situation in Ukraine and the situation in Taiwan and China." This caused the Chinese MFA to react sharply and inimically.
In April 2023, Morawiecki told the Atlantic Council think-tank that: "Our relationship with Hungary changed a lot because of the position of Hungary toward Ukraine and Russia" after the invasion. "We had once very strong cooperation on the level of the Visegrad group [Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia], now much less so."
In July 2023, Morawiecki warned that Poland is not planning to open its borders to imports of agricultural products from Ukraine, saying "We protect our agriculture, that’s why we don’t open borders for agricultural goods from Ukraine."
Morawiecki's government has faced allegations of spying on hundreds of people, including leading opposition figures, using Pegasus software. Among those targeted whose names have been revealed are Krzysztof Brejza (Civic Platform campaign leader), former foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, former finance minister Jacek Rostowski, Michał Kołodziejczak (leader of a peasant protest movement). In addition to these leading figures, there are also former ministers from Donald Tusk's first governments (2007–2014), three retired Polish army generals, two lobbyists for US arms firms, the president of one of the main employers' organisations, as well as a number of PiS representatives. Much of the information obtained with the software, notably SMS and e-mail correspondence, was made public in allegedly manipulated forms by public television. The latter, which was accused of being aligned with the government, used this information to organise campaigns to discredit opposition figures.
In October 2023, he was re-elected as a member of the Sejm. On 6 November, President Andrzej Duda in his message to the nation announced he would designate Morawiecki as prime minister. On 27 November, he was confirmed as prime minister with a new cabinet. However, heavy losses for Law and Justice left his cabinet well short of majority support in the Sejm. An opposition coalition fronted by former prime minister Donald Tusk had enough seats between them to defeat Morawiecki and nominate Tusk in his place. As expected, Morawiecki's cabinet was defeated in the legislature on 11 December, and Tusk was elected his successor.
