Senate rejects Sejm's candidate for IPN head in rare inter-chamber clash

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

In a rare clash between Poland’s two houses of parliament, in both of which the government has a majority, the Senate has rejected a candidate chosen by the Sejm to become the new head of the state Institute of National Remembrance (IPN).

The nominee, Mateusz Szpytma, has served as deputy head of the IPN since 2016, including when it was under the leadership of Karol Nawrocki, who last year was elected president of Poland with the support of the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Szpytma’s candidacy has been opposed by most of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition, who argue he helped politicise the IPN under the former PiS government. However, some more conservative elements of the coalition joined the opposition in supporting Szpytma, giving him a majority in the Sejm but not the Senate.

Senatorowie nie wyrazili zgody na powołanie Mateusza Szpytmy na Prezesa Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej – Komisji Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu

— Senat RP 🇵🇱 (@PolskiSenat) August 6, 2026

The IPN is a body tasked with researching, documenting and educating about Poland’s tumultuous and tragic 20th-century history. It also has the power to prosecute crimes relating to the periods when the country was under Nazi and communist rule.

The institute was led by Nawrocki from 2021 until August last year, when he became president of Poland. Since then, the IPN has been without a permanent head.

Last October, the IPN’s council nominated Karol Polejowski, another of the institute’s deputy heads, to be its new president. But he was rejected by the Sejm, which, along with the Senate, must approve the choice.

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In April, the council instead recommended Szpytma, whose candidacy was approved by the Sejm last month. He received support mainly from opposition parties, including PiS and the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja).

However, in a rare split within the ruling coalition, one of its junior members, the centre-right Polish People’s Party (PSL), also backed Szpytma, as did some MPs from the centrist Poland 2050 (Polska 2050). That was enough to give him a majority.

By contrast, the main ruling party, Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO), and The Left (Lewica) opposed his nomination, citing a letter signed earlier this year by 170 academics, who described Szpytma as “one of the faces of IPN’s politicisation” under the former PiS government.

However, PSL’s leader, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, who also serves as Poland’s defence minister and deputy prime minister rejected that characterisation and said that PSL had backed Szpytma because of his work commemorating historical figures from the agrarian movement in which PSL is rooted.

In a rare split in the ruling coalition, MPs from two parties, PSL and Poland 2050, voted with the opposition in the Sejm for a new head of the Institute of National Remembrance.

However, PM Donald Tusk says their choice will be rejected by the Senate https://t.co/0CGmbsNp4F

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 17, 2026

However, it was widely expected that Szpytma’s candidacy would be blocked by the upper-house Senate, where even the PSL and opposition combined do not have a majority in the 100-seat chamber.

That was confirmed in a vote on Thursday, when 50 senators were opposed to Szyptma and only 38 were in favour, with one abstention. “We voted against further politicisation” of IPN and “against tolerating financial irregularities”, wrote the speaker of the Senate, Małgorzata Kidawa-Błonska of KO.

The latter comment was likely a reference to a report by the Supreme Audit Office (NIK) last year which found that the IPN had, between 2022 and 2025, failed to properly manage tens of millions of zloty in spending, including various violations of regulations on the use of public funds.

Szpytma told journalists that he was not surprised by the result of the vote, saying he believes his connection to Nawrocki, who is an ardent opponent of the current government and has vetoed a record number of laws , is the reason why he lost.

Nie zgodziliśmy się w Senacie, by człowiek Karola Nawrockiego został prezesem IPN. Zagłosowaliśmy przeciw dalszemu upolitycznianiu Instytutu. Przeciw tolerowaniu nieprawidłowości finansowych. Pan Szpytma nie wprowadziłby żadnych zmian w funkcjonowaniu IPN.

— Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska (@M_K_Blonska) August 6, 2026

The IPN plays an important role in Polish public life, including in commemorating, investigating and prosecuting crimes that took place during the Nazi-German and Soviet occupations of Poland in World War Two, as well as during the decades of communist rule afterwards.

Under Nawrocki’s leadership, the IPN accelerated the process of demolishing remaining Soviet monuments in Poland, often prompting criticism from Russia .

It has also been closely involved in the exhumation of victims of the Volhynia massacres , in which Ukrainian nationalists killed around 100,000 Poles during World War Two.

During PiS’s time in power from 2015 to 2023, the IPN was accused of becoming increasingly politicised , using its activities to support the historical narratived promoted by the government. In 2021, Israel protested after a former far-right activist was appointed to head one of the IPN’s local branches.

Russia has criticised the "sacrilegious" demolition of a Soviet monument in Poland, calling it a “flagrant violation” of a bilateral agreement.

But Poland's @ipngovpl says it was a "propaganda object" that had to be removed under a "decommunisation" law https://t.co/73T99ZlPqU

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) August 4, 2026

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.



Main image credit: Sławek Kasper/IPN (under CC BY-SA 4.0)