Power struggle over Poland's Constitutional Tribunal escalates into standoff between president and government

Poland's judicial system entered a state of acute crisis on the night of 30-31 October when the government suspended Bogdan Święczkowski, president of the Constitutional Tribunal, and Bartłomiej Sochański, its vice-president. Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek requested that both judges be stripped of immunity from prosecution, enabling criminal charges to be brought against them. The Constitutional Tribunal, responsible for ruling on the constitutionality of laws and government actions, has become a flashpoint in the broader conflict between Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government and the conservative judiciary appointed under the previous Law and Justice administration.

Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, elected by the current Sejm, announced she was assuming leadership of the tribunal. The tribunal itself denounced this move on social media as a judicial 'coup d'état', insisting that Święczkowski and Sochański remained its legitimately appointed leaders. President Karol Nawrocki, a PiS-backed opponent of Tusk, cut short his attendance at the Summer Youth Olympics in Senegal and flew back to Warsaw overnight. Upon entering the tribunal building alongside the Supreme Court's first president, Nawrocki confronted Korwin-Piotrowska directly, reportedly telling her, 'You are not judges of the Constitutional Tribunal'. Riot police were deployed outside the court to prevent PiS supporters from entering; three protesters were detained after breaching the tribunal's fence.

Prime Minister Tusk defended the government's actions as necessary to 'depoliticise the judiciary' following what he characterised as 'years of Law and Justice's lawlessness', though he acknowledged the process was 'difficult, sometimes painful'. In protest at the government's intervention, Poland's ambassadors to Romania and China resigned. Ambassador to Romania Paweł Soloch and ambassador to China Jakub Kumoch both stepped down, with Soloch declaring on social media that he could not continue serving amid what he described as 'an attempt to illegally seize control of the Constitutional Court'.