PM Tusk dismisses finance minister resignation 'gossip'

PM Donald Tusk (left) with Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski before meeting of Council of Ministers, Tuesday: photo - (PAP/Radek Pietruszka

“It's just gossip. I'm not going to comment,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday after the Reuters news agency claimed that three sources had informed them, off the record, that Rostowski would be asked to resign from the centre-right Civic Platform-led cabinet as head of the finance ministry in “a few months time”.

“The plan is to replace [Rostowski] with someone as part of a bigger cabinet reshuffle that will also see ministers like [sports minister Joanna] Mucha and [environment minister Marcin] Korolec go," Reuters reports a senior source in the government telling them.

Prime Minister Tusk, however, said that even “one of the most respected agencies in the world […] practices journalism based only on imagination or gossip”.

“Because it is only gossip I'm not going to comment,” Tusk told journalists.

Minister Rostowski - who is also deputy prime minister - has been under fire since Poland's economy, until recently a star performer in the EU, has slowed more than expected this year, forcing the government, in power since 2007, to raise borrowing levels and cut public spending.

Reuters claims that two other sources, not in the government but close to it, “both said independently Tusk was planning to let Rostowski go within several months”.

EU budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski, former prime minister Jan Krzystof Bielecki and Dariusz Rosati, chairman of the parliament's public finance committee, “have also been named as possible replacements,” Reuters reports. (pg)