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Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk survived a parliamentary vote of confidence on Wednesday, following a leaked tapes scandal, media reports said.
Secret recordings of senior officials published by news magazine Wprost have plunged Poland into a political storm, which prompted Tusk calling the vote earlier in the day.
Tusk's two-party governing coalition won backing from 237 MPs, with 203 against. The required majority was 231 votes.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Wednesday asked in the Sejm (lower house) for a vote of confidence for his government.
He told MPs that Poland's interests could be jeopardized by the leaked tapes scandal, in which several government ministers' private, and sometimes compromising, conversations were illegally recorded and the tapes released to a Polish weekly.
"I have a simple plan that will largely depend on the House. We need certainty beyond Poland's borders that the Polish state is running smoothly and coping well also with this unusual, serious crisis; that on the eve of negotiations in Brussels, the Polish government has a mandate stemming from the elections and from a parliamentary majority," PM Tusk told MPs.
The prime minister pointed out that one effect of the leaked tapes scandal was the Polish government's diminished ability to influence how top European Union positions are filled. He added that the government would fight at the EU summit for specific regulations concerning an energy union.
"There can be no room for guesswork (as to whether) there is a government in Poland or whether it will fall at any minute," he said regarding the vote of confidence.
Tusk emphasized that "the real political problem" of the leaked recordings was that "a group of criminals (...) presumed to illegally record and eavesdrop, and then publish materials that are causing this earthquake."
The prime minister began his Sejm presentation of the leaked tapes scandal with an apology for "appalling, sometimes scandalous behavior, language, inappropriate words" in the illegally recorded conversations of high officials, including ministers.
According to Tusk, the actions of state bodies following the covert recordings were published shows that "institutions responsible for legal order are prepared for prompt action."
Eavesdropping "without a given person's knowledge, recording and publishing such materials is a crime," the PM said. According to him, the dates of the recordings suggest that politicians were bugged for at least 18 months and that "tens or maybe even hundreds of people" were involved.
"Today I can define, precisely and seriously, the fundamental interests of the Polish state that could be threatened or jeopardized in connection with the bugging scandal," Tusk said.
"I will ask all the MPs regardless of their affiliation to think very carefully whether it really is in Poland's interest (to) fulfill a scenario that did not originate in institutions of public life, nor in the parliament or government," the prime minister said.
Tusk also said that he would not make any decision "dictated by the intentions and games of people who do not hesitate to commit a crime in order to influence the political situation in Poland, the government and parliament."
During a break in the debates Sejm Speaker Ewa Kopacz said that if the Council of Senior MPs agrees with her proposal regarding the agenda of the sitting, then a vote of confidence in the government could be held no earlier than 9 pm (1900GMT) on Wednesday.
In the middle of June Polish weekly "Wprost" published illegal recordings of private conversations between Interior Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, and the President of the National Bank of Poland Marek Belka as well as between Andrzej Parafianowicz, former Finance Ministry official, and former Minister of Transport Slawomir Nowak.
On Monday a recorded conversation between Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski and former Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski, and another one between government Spokesperson Pawel Gras, Treasury Minister Wlodzimierz Karpinski, Deputy Treasury Minister Zdzislaw Gawlik and PKN Orlen President Jacek Krawiec were published by Wprost.
