WARSAW, Poland -- Members of Poland's newly elected right-wing parliament were sworn in on Thursday, part of a major power shift in the European Union's largest eastern member.
Poland's outgoing pro-market Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz then resigned with her government, praising what her Civic Platform party had achieved in eight years of power and saying she hopes the new government will not damage the country's finances.
For the first time since Poland threw off communism in 1989, the country has a parliament with no left-wing representation. In another first, a single party -- Law and Justice -- won enough votes for a parliamentary majority, putting it in a strong position to put through its policies without having to make compromises with a coalition partner.
Law and Justice has its roots in the anti-communist Solidarity movement and is strongly pro-U.S. and pro-NATO but more skeptical of the European Union than Civic Platform. Many of its members are deeply critical of Russia.
Party chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski lost his identical twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski, in a plane crash in Russia in 2010, something that has added to an already strong distrust of Russia by many party veterans.
The new government is to be led by Beata Szydlo, whose reputation for moderation helped bring the party to victory in the Oct. 25 parliamentary election.
On Monday Szydlo announced the makeup of her Cabinet, which is facing some criticism for including many party veterans with a reputation for hard-core and radical ideas. The most controversial is the new defence minister, Antoni Macierewicz, who has promoted a conspiracy theory that the 2010 plane crash that killed President Kaczynski and 95 others was an assassination masterminded by Russia. State investigations in Russia and Poland determined that it was an accident.
