Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland

Role in administration

As the executive office and support staff for the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers, the Chancellery serves to articulate and present cabinet positions on matters, streamline communication between the Prime Minister and the cabinet, and coordinate executive affairs. Beginning with the start of each year (or half year periods), the chief of the Chancellery communicates to all members of the cabinet to present an agenda, while also indicating the government's goals for the coming period. Once a legislative work agenda is introduced into the cabinet, the Chancellery proceeds to scrutinize ministerial drafts for compliance in both substance and timing. Chancellery support staff include the office's chief, a minister within the cabinet, and a range of secretaries of state (Sekretarz stanu) and undersecretaries of the state (Podsekretarz stanu) holding positions for various policy agendas delegated by the Prime Minister.

In addition to acting as the coordinator of executive and ministerial affairs, the Chancellery building also acts as the location for cabinet meetings every Tuesday, with the Prime Minister chairing the Council of Ministers. In addition, the Prime Minister and the office's support staff meet visiting foreign and domestic delegations within the Chancellery.

Organizational Structure of the Office of the Prime Minister:

• The Secretariat of the Prime Minister
• Government Information Centre
• Department of Strategic Analysis
• Department of the Council of Ministers
• Department of Control and Supervision
• Department of the Legal
• Department of the Council of Ministers
• Department of Civil Affairs
• Department of Civil Service
• Department of Programming and Impact Assessment
• Department of Foreign Affairs
• Office of Budget and Financial
• Office of the Director-General
• College Office for Special Services
• Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Prime Minister of the Council of Ministers for International Dialogue
• Office of the Government Plenipotentiary for Equal Treatment
• Protection Bureau

List of Chiefs of the Chancellery

The Chancellery building

At its inception in 1997, the Chancellery took its offices in the neoclassical former Cadet Corps building along Ujazdów Avenue in central Warsaw. Built between 1900 and 1903 under Russian-controlled Congress Poland, the building originally provided the home to the Alexander Suvorov Cadet Corps of the Imperial Russian Army. At the outbreak of the First World War, the Cadet Corps building was transformed into a municipal hospital, and following the Russian retreat, a German Army hospital. Shortly following Poland regained its independence on 11 November 1918, troops from the Polish Infantry Academy in Ostrów Mazowiecka negotiated the withdrawal of German troops and medical patients out of the Cadet Corps building in return for safe passage out of the new republic. The building quickly came under the administration of the new Polish Army's Infantry Academy. During the 1926 May Coup, the Infantry Academy supported the government of President Stanisław Wojciechowski and Prime Minister Wincenty Witos against Marshal Józef Piłsudski. As a consequence, the victorious Piłsudski-influenced government forced the Infantry Academy to vacate the building's premises, beginning a two-year period of refurbishing the structure. The General Inspectorate of the Armed Forces moved into the structure in 1928; Piłsudski himself moved nearby to a connecting palace, living there until shortly before his death in 1935. At the start of the Second World War four years later, the southern wing of the building suffered damage during the Siege of Warsaw, with the structure's surviving floors and wings transforming into an SS barracks and its damaged southern portion into an execution ground during the Nazi occupation.

After the war's conclusion, the ushering in of the communist era brought extensive reconstruction, floor and room additions to the Cadet Corps building, lasting until 1948. From 1953 until the dissolution of the People's Republic of Poland, the building served as the home of the Office of the Council of Ministers; additional wings and floors of the structure were transformed into the ruling PZPR's social science academy, as well as the secretariat offices of the Prime Minister. The building served as the host to the historic Round Table Talks in 1989, signaling both an end to communist dominance in Poland and the fall of communism throughout the Eastern Bloc. In 1995, the former Cadet Corps building was entered into the registry of historic monuments within Warsaw Voivodeship for its architecture and unique role in the history of the republic. Since 1997, the building has served as the home of the Chancellery. Today, the building is considered one of the most politically important centers of decision-making in Poland.