Donald Tusk said he will appoint Stanisław Kracik as commissioner in Kraków after residents voted on Sunday to recall Aleksander Miszalski as president of the city. The appointment will give Kracik temporary control of all the powers and duties of the mayor until a new election is held.
Tusk said the new vote for Kraków’s mayor would take place in late summer, although he said it was not yet possible to give an exact date because of the procedure. Under the rules, an early election should be held within 90 days of the mayor’s mandate being terminated. The commissioner will run the city in the meantime and prepare it for the vote.
The decision comes after a referendum that also targeted Kraków’s city council fell short of the validity threshold. That means the council will continue operating, while the city’s leadership changes only at the top. The referendum on recalling the council missed validity by a little over 3,000 votes, leaving the chamber in place even as the mayor was removed.
Kracik is not new to Kraków’s top table. He has been vice-president of the city since 2024, was mayor of Niepołomice and voivode of Małopolska, and has been a member of Platforma Obywatelska since 2011. Tusk said Kracik would take over for several weeks, calling on him to manage the city through the transition and into the early election campaign.
The prime minister also addressed Miszalski directly, saying he thanked him for what he had done and that the result was part of democracy, where public decisions can be unpopular and sometimes wrong. For Kraków, the immediate change is practical rather than political theater: one leader is out, a commissioner is coming in, and the city now moves toward a fresh mayoral contest that could reset its leadership before summer ends.
