After seven years the Polish Prime Minister resigned ahead of his departure to Brussels as president of the European Council in place of the Belgian Herman Van Rompuy. Most likely to succeed Tusk is his close ally Ewa Kopacz.

Tusk is a towering figure in Poland’s politics, which features two large right-of-center parties as main rivals. Since taking power in 2007, the media-savvy prime minister has navigated his administration as well as the ruling Civic Platform party through several major crises.

Flexible policies that at times contradicted election promises, as well as skillful public relations and lucky breaks, have allowed him to survive. In 2011, he became the first Polish leader in recent history to be re-elected to power.
“I handed in the papers,” said the Polish Prime Minister after a meeting with Poland’s president, Bronislaw Komorowski.

The president is likely to accept the cabinet’s resignation on Thursday, according to earlier comments from his press office. He will then have two weeks to swear in a new cabinet, which will have another two weeks to win a vote of confidence from the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament.

A smooth transition is expected after current Sejm speaker Ewa Kopacz was picked to succeed Mr. Tusk by the ruling center-right coalition, which has a slim but reliable majority in the lower house. Kopacz, previously health minister in Mr. Tusk’s cabinet, is set to become the second woman after communism in Poland collapsed in 1989 to head the Polish government.