Berek Leaves Government: Unofficial Reports Point to Constitutional Tribunal Post

Maciej Berek has stepped down as minister and chairman of the Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers, with unofficial sources suggesting he will become a judge on the Constitutional Tribunal.

Ministerial Resignation

As reported on Gazeta.pl, Donald Tusk announced before the start of the Tuesday, August 11, Council of Ministers meeting that Maciej Berek is stepping down from his role as minister for supervising the implementation of government policy and as chairman of the Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers. His duties will be taken over by Joanna Knapińska, who previously headed the Government Legislation Centre.

Berek resigned from his ministerial function on his own accord.

We agreed with Minister Berek that he will transition to other tasks. He asked me to release him from the duties he has performed up to now, emphasized the head of government.

Tusk addressed members of the cabinet directly and highlighted Berek’s key role in coordinating ministerial work. Almost every single one of you, when you start talking about what you have done, begins by thanking Minister Berek, he added.

Minister, dear Maciek, we have been working closely together since 1997. Few people remember today that such systemic changes as the direct election of village mayors, municipal mayors, and city presidents were something the two of us sat on back then in the Senate and prepared the first bill projects for. I know that you will serve the homeland well more than once, Tusk added.

Unofficial: Berek to Join the Constitutional Tribunal

According to information from the Polityka Insight analytical center, Berek will be elected as a judge of the Constitutional Tribunal after leaving the government.

This would be a difficult decision to understand, especially in the context of promises made by the ruling majority regarding the depoliticization of the judiciary, including the Constitutional Tribunal, whose composition was largely shaped during the PiS rule.

All the more so, since Berek himself presented the Deregulation 2.0 program, which was supposed to introduce a new quality in the functioning of the judiciary, primarily through the elimination of bureaucracy and the digitization of courts.

Who is Maciej Berek?

Maciej Berek began his career in state structures in the late 1990s in the Senate Chancellery, where he worked as a legislator on key local government reform projects, including the introduction of direct elections for village, municipal, and city mayors.

Between 2007 and 2015, in the PO-PSL government, he served as the president of the Government Legislation Centre and Secretary of the Council of Ministers. In December 2023, he joined Donald Tusk’s government as a minister-member of the Council of Ministers and chairman of the Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers, taking responsibility for coordinating legislative work across individual ministries and ensuring the efficient implementation of government policy.