Standoff over Poland's Constitutional Tribunal escalates
Poland's government is trying to suspend two leading judges of the Constitutional Tribunal and have them prosecuted. President Karol Nawrocki says the constitutional order has been violated.
A political confrontation over Poland's highest constitutional court, the Constitutional Tribunal, which rules on the legality of adopted legislation, has escalated. The conflict flared after Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government sought to remove two of the tribunal's senior judges and have them held criminally liable. The events unfolded overnight and on the morning of 31 October, deepening the dispute between the government and the president over the judiciary.
What happened
Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Zurek filed a request to lift the judicial immunity of tribunal president Bogdan Swieczkowski and his deputy Bartosz Sochanski. Both were appointed under the previous government, led by the right-wing Law and Justice party. Earlier, the tribunal's most senior judge, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, suspended Swieczkowski from his duties and took over the court's leadership, Reuters reported.
People gathered outside the tribunal building in protest. Some participants tried to break through police barriers, AFP reported, and special-purpose police units were sent to keep demonstrators out of the court. The tribunal itself stated that the two judges remain lawfully appointed.
President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by Law and Justice, turned back his plane, which was heading to Senegal for the Youth Olympic Games, and returned to Warsaw. On social media he wrote that the constitutional order had been violated overnight and a constitutional state body seized by force. He called for urgent consultations with parliamentary forces.
Background
Law and Justice held power from 2015 to 2023 and quickly appointed its own judges to the tribunal to secure a majority. The European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union later ruled that three judges were chosen unlawfully and that the tribunal had ceased to be an independent and impartial court. Citing those rulings, Tusk's government stopped publishing the tribunal's decisions.
After taking office in 2023, Tusk promised to depoliticise the judiciary but has been unable to reverse the earlier changes, partly because Nawrocki and his predecessor Andrzej Duda used presidential vetoes to block his initiatives.
