“The work of millions of Polish men and women is going to waste,” wrote former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on X. The Deputy Chairman of Law and Justice referred to the decision of Fitch Ratings, which changed Poland’s outlook to negative. He did not spare strong words against those currently in power.
On Saturday, Finance Minister Andrzej Domański announced that Fitch had changed Poland’s rating outlook to negative. A member of the Council of Ministers blamed this on President Karol Nawrocki, who has been in office for just over a month. The statement sparked a considerable storm online.
Former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki commented on the agency’s assessment: “Today, we are ruled by financial bunglers,” he declared. According to him, “less than two years were enough for Poland to end up with one of the worst financial outlooks in the European Union.”
The former prime minister argued that the agency’s decision “is a clear signal about the policies of the current government.” He added: “Such decisions are not made overnight – they are the result of public finance problems that have been mounting for many months.”
“The main catalyst for the change was the publication of the draft budget for next year. The adopted assumptions are a negative surprise for the market, causing mostly pessimistic assessments and raising doubts about the government’s ability to carry out a skillful fiscal consolidation,” Morawiecki assessed.
As the former prime minister calculated: “The central government budget deficit after just seven months of 2025 has already reached 156.7 billion PLN – more than in the entire pandemic year of 2020. This year, the general government deficit will amount to 6.9% of GDP, and next year only slightly less – 6.5%. According to Fitch, in 2027, it will fall to only 6.3%. The plan presented a year ago by Donald Tusk’s government to exit excessive deficit has turned out to be overestimated by… 100%.”
“Already in March, Fitch pointed, among other things, to public finances and the failure to consolidate them as risks for the rating. In particular, the rapid rise in public debt was considered a threat to Poland’s rating outlook. As I predicted, this year it will exceed 60% of GDP, soon approach 70%, then 80% and beyond. Where is the threshold at which the government will finally begin to care about the key indicators that expose their incompetence? The trend and pace of debt growth are deeply troubling,”
he stressed.
According to Morawiecki, “with GDP growth reaching 3%, the increase in debt-to-GDP ratio should at least have been curbed.” Instead, he added, “this dynamic is only accelerating,” emphasizing that: “Fitch’s negative assessment is a signal to investors: Poland is becoming a country with greater financial risk.”
“What is needed today is a clear plan to restore stability to public finances. Without it, Poland will sink into a debt spiral (one should note the rapidly growing debt servicing costs relative to budget revenues), and ordinary citizens will bear the cost of the crisis. Companies will face higher borrowing costs,”
Morawiecki stated.
Concluding his post on X, he declared, “This plan cannot be realized without removing them from power. Once already, we repaired public finances after those bunglers. We will do it again – but it is Poland that suffers.”