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Poland’s opposition has urged the outgoing rightwing administration to delay appointing the next financial regulator to avoid burdening expected new premier Donald Tusk with hangovers from the previous government.

“We believe the outgoing government should now not be nominating high-profile officials, especially not somebody who is in charge of the financial supervision of this country,” Michał Kobosko, deputy leader of the Poland 2050 party that is part of Tusk’s coalition, told the Financial Times. “This is a very serious issue.” 

Last week, president Andrzej Duda nominated incumbent premier Mateusz Morawiecki and his rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party to form the next government even though three pro-EU opposition parties led by Tusk won a combined parliamentary majority last month.

Duda’s decision has delayed the comeback of former premier Tusk. But another consequence is that it grants Morawiecki an opportunity to make one more major appointment because the five-year term of the head of Poland’s KNF financial watchdog expires on November 23. 

The prospect of Morawiecki selecting the next KNF chief has angered Tusk’s coalition politicians, who are already bracing themselves for working alongside Duda and other PiS loyalists.

Morawiecki has not indicated whom he would appoint to the KNF, but one candidate is the current chair Jacek Jastrzębski, first nominated by the PiS premier in 2018.

The prime minister’s office did not comment on the issue and the regulator said that “appointing the head of the KNF is the prime minister’s decision”. Morawiecki does not need parliamentary approval for this appointment. 

“Jastrzębski is better than some other terrible PiS candidates I’ve heard mentioned, but he is absolutely Morawiecki’s man and he easily accepted the very weak PiS candidates who took charge of our state financial institutions,” said one opposition politician, who asked to remain anonymous given that Tusk has yet to take office. “We need a regulator who is politically neutral.”

Another uncomfortable bedfellow for Tusk is the president of the National Bank of Poland, Adam Glapiński, who started his second six-year term in 2022. Glapiński is a personal friend of PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński. Ahead of the election, he shocked markets in September with a big interest rate cut even though Poland still had double-digit inflation. 

During his election campaign Tusk pledged to remove Glapiński as soon as he took power, calling him “incompetent and indecent”. But on Friday Glapiński warned Tusk against trying to oust him, saying attempts to remove him were part of an opposition plan to push Poland into euro membership, which would require central bank backing.

Tusk wanted Poland to adopt the euro when he was prime minister over a decade ago, but he has not revived recently an idea that has become unpopular with most Poles, according to opinion polls.

Once in office, Tusk will need to tread carefully when purging institutions of PiS appointees to avoid a repeat of the political interference that he accused PiS of deploying in its eight years in power.

For businesses, especially banks, the KNF is seen as a crucial institution to guarantee stability. “The KNF’s leadership is very important in the current troubled times,” said Agnieszka Accordi, partner in the Polish office of accounting and consulting firm PwC.

Polish banks have been losing costly court battles against homebuyers who took mortgages in Swiss francs two decades ago and have recently convinced judges that banks should pay for the foreign exchange losses they suffered.

These mortgage holders lost out once the franc surged against the Polish zloty during the 2008 financial crisis, and Jastrzębski has recently been pushing to limit the liability of lenders to avoid a banking sector meltdown. 

Duda has said it is normal to give PiS a final chance to remain in office, as it remains the largest party in the new parliament that convenes on Monday. But Morawiecki can only gather a parliamentary majority if Tusk’s coalition falls apart. 

Instead, the opposition sealed a formal coalition agreement on Friday that includes pledges to restore the rule of law, overhaul the state media and education system as well as accelerate the green energy transition.