"Mr President, we were supposed to meet. I have been waiting for this invitation for some time, but I don't want to wait any longer," Tusk said.
He invited Nawrocki, his wife and their children to his home in Sopot to share opłatek, the traditional Christmas wafer.
"Let’s talk as one Pole to another," he added.
The response from the president’s camp was critical.
Zbigniew Bogucki, head of the President’s Chancellery, told Polish Radio that the focus should remain on Independence Day.
"It is Independence Day, not Christmas Eve. Today, we are all celebrating as one great Polish national community" he said.
Paweł Szefernaker, head of the president’s cabinet, also criticised the invitation in a post on social media, accusing Tusk of playing different roles: "a democrat yesterday, a dove of peace today."
He said the prime minister spoke of unity but repeatedly avoided joint public appearances with Nawrocki on national holidays.
Tusk could simply have stayed in Warsaw and laid a wreath with the president at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, he added.
The exchanges came after Nawrocki delivered a speech at Piłsudski Square in Warsaw to mark the 108th anniversary of Poland regaining independence.
The president called for the prestige of the Constitutional Tribunal to be restored and acknowledged the presence of its suspended president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and his deputy.
He said the country's constitutional institutions should remain above political disputes.
Nawrocki also thanked military generals and officers of the national tax administration agency, while criticising the performance of Finance Minister Andrzej Domański.
Tusk later responded on social media, saying the president could have tried, at least on this one day, to unite Poles rather than divide them.
"A pity," he wrote.
Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski also criticised the president’s speech, describing it as inconsistent.
"The president is at one moment a hammer against the elites and at another a king the magnates do not listen to."
He added that the First Republic was destroyed by irresponsible vetoing of laws, often at the instigation of lobbyists and foreign states.
Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński, meanwhile, said on X that Domański was fighting to secure funding from the EU's SAFE programme for Polish police officers and border guards, including for their personal security.
He accused Nawrocki of taking that money away by vetoing the law implementing the instrument.
(ał)
Source: IAR