Riot police surrounded Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw on Friday night after a group of judges backed by the government moved to suspend the court’s chief justice, deepening a decade-old fight over who legitimately sits on the country’s top constitutional court.
President Karol Nawrocki, who is aligned with the right-wing opposition, turned his plane around on the way to a state visit to Senegal. “At a moment like this, the President must be in Poland. I am cutting short my flight to Senegal. I am returning,” he wrote on X. In the early hours of Saturday, October 31, he went to the court and entered the building amid scuffles at the entrance.
Each side accuses the other of an unconstitutional power grab. The opposition and the court’s own account on X called the move a coup d’état, while Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it was part of restoring the rule of law.
A suspension and a night of protests
On Friday evening, seven judges elected by parliament this year were escorted into the tribunal by officers of the State Protection Service, which reports to the interior minister, according to the court’s spokeswoman, Weronika Ścibor. They entered through a gate from the prime minister’s chancellery rather than the main entrance.
One of them, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, said she had ordered the suspension of Chief Justice Bogdan Święczkowski, who is aligned with the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party and the president, and his deputy, Bartłomiej Sochański. She said she acted as the judge with the longest judicial career and accused Święczkowski of blocking new judges from taking up their posts.
A notice on the court’s website ordered a one-month “break” in the two men’s duties, citing Article 130 of Poland’s law on common courts. That provision allows a court president or the justice minister to remove a judge from duty immediately if they are caught committing an offense. The court’s official X account rejected the move, saying Święczkowski “remains chief justice,” that Korwin-Piotrowska “is not a TK judge” and that all those taking part were “committing the crime of a coup d’état.”
Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek said he had asked the tribunal to lift the immunity of Święczkowski and Sochański so they could be prosecuted, and that the motions were delivered to “the longest-serving judge,” meaning Korwin-Piotrowska.
Opposition supporters gathered outside. Police said officers had entered the court grounds but not the building, and that three people who jumped the fence were detained.
When Nawrocki arrived, accompanied by Zbigniew Kapiński, head of Poland’s Supreme Court, accounts of what happened at the door diverged. Maciej Berek, one of the newly elected judges, said: “The president chose the path of physical confrontation with her.” The president’s side said officials tried to stop him from entering. In a recording broadcast by Polish media, Nawrocki was heard saying that Korwin-Piotrowska, Berek and another of the new judges were not judges of the tribunal.
Sharply opposed readings of the law
PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński, speaking outside the court, said that “as of today, Poland has become a police state, and from there it’s a straight path to authoritarianism, and then to totalitarianism.” Kapiński said the move was “undoubtedly a coup d’etat.”
Tusk defended it. “Restoring the rule of law is our duty. After years of PiS-led lawlessness, this is a difficult process, sometimes painful, and it requires decisive action. There is no other way,” he wrote on X.
Legal experts are divided. Marcin Matczak, a constitutional law scholar, called Święczkowski “the worst person to serve as the president of the TK,” but said the legal basis for suspending him “is nonexistent for a million reasons.” He noted that the justice minister supervises ordinary courts but has no such authority over the tribunal.
A court in dispute since 2015
The tribunal has been at the center of a political fight since 2015. Under Poland’s constitution, its 15 judges are elected by the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, for a single nine-year term. That year the outgoing centrist majority and the incoming PiS government both moved to fill seats with their own picks, and the court remained contested throughout eight years of PiS rule, which brought repeated clashes with the European Union over judicial independence.
Tusk’s coalition, in power since late 2023, does not recognize the court in its current form and says three of its judges were unlawfully appointed. Parliament elected eight new judges this year, but Nawrocki, who won the 2025 presidential election, refused to swear in five of them, citing how they were chosen or their qualifications. The five took their oaths in parliament instead. Święczkowski refused to admit them, despite an order from the European Court of Human Rights to let them take up their seats.
Earlier this month the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s advisory body on constitutional law, adopted an opinion on the president’s powers in swearing in Constitutional Tribunal judges. It found that the president should swear in judges chosen by parliament “without delay,” has no power to review their election and, if he refuses, judges are justified in taking the oath without him. The president’s office said the commission’s opinions are advisory and not binding.
The standoff hardens the divide between Tusk’s government and the president ahead of parliamentary elections due in 2027.
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