Albert Zawada/PAP

Poland’s prime minister has said his party seeks to form a “cross-party, non-party” government, completely unlike the previous one.

Mateusz Morawiecki, the prime minister in the outgoing Law and Justice (PiS) government, told a Friday press conference that October’s general election had returned a parliament whose “make-up of votes looks completely different” to the previous one. He also said that in line with the mission to form a new government, entrusted to him by President Andrzej Duda, he would present his proposed line-up within seven or eight days.

Despite winning most seats in the October 15 general election, the socially-conservative PiS lost a ruling majority in both houses of parliament and has slim chance of forming a coalition government as no other party seems to be interested in cooperation with them.

But Morawiecki seems determined to try.

“It will certainly be a government completely different from the one that has until now fulfilled its obligations,” Morawiecki said. “Why? Primarily because I see the results of the election in the following way: the voters decided they want to end the Poland-Poland war: we want a cross-party government, maybe even a non-partisan one, we want a government that will be a government of balance.”

He said he had therefore approached the formation of his proposed government in a way that was “the most appropriate from the point of view of citizens, from the point of view of Poland – in other words in terms of its programme.”

He said that as the Polish public had chosen various parties and groupings, he had tried to select the most valuable elements of their various programmes and create from them the “ten commandments of Polish issues,” for the next four years with a view to “very positively changing the lives of Poles, despite the major crises that are constantly occurring around us.”