Police deployed in Poland amid stand-off over control of Constitutional Court
Poland's government is trying to remove the leadership of the Constitutional Court, and riot police have been sent to guard the building. The court calls the move a coup.
Riot police were deployed outside the Constitutional Court building in Warsaw to keep demonstrators from entering. The deployment came during a sharp dispute between Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government and Poland's top constitutional court over who leads it. The court rules on whether legislation is lawful, so control over it affects the country's whole system of rule of law.
In a social media post, the court said the two judges the government wants to prosecute remain its legally appointed senior justices. It stated that everyone taking part in the actions is committing the crime of a coup d'état. Justice Minister Żurek has said court president Święczkowski and his deputy should face criminal charges for not allowing certain judges to adjudicate.
Tusk wrote online that restoring the rule of law is the government's duty, and that after years of lawlessness under the Law and Justice party (PiS), the process is difficult and sometimes painful and demands decisive action. President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by PiS, ordered his plane back to Warsaw as he travelled to Senegal for the Summer Youth Olympic Games.
Roots of the dispute
The PiS-led government took office in 2015 and quickly appointed judges to gain a majority on the court. The European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union later ruled that three judges had been elected improperly, because they occupied posts already validly filled by the previous parliament. The European courts found the tribunal was no longer independent and impartial, and Tusk's government has used this as grounds to stop publishing its rulings.
Tusk has not managed to reverse the PiS-era changes, partly because Nawrocki and his predecessor Andrzej Duda used presidential vetoes. Nawrocki has also refused to swear in five judges elected by parliament since March, citing alleged flaws in the selection procedure. One of them, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, has now been placed in temporary charge of the court. Earlier this month the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe's advisory body on constitutional matters, said he should swear them in.
Criticism
Some Tusk supporters have accused him of failing to act decisively, while others see the move as an effort to boost his popularity before parliamentary elections scheduled for next year. Lawyer Marcin Matczak, a critic of the PiS-era judicial reform, said the suspension of the president had no legal basis and warned that images of armed police would damage the rule of law for years.
