Presidential chancellery letter says Maciej Berek did not take TK judge oath before president

On Tuesday, 27 October, the Tribunal's spokeswoman Weronika Ścibor told PAP that the letter from Zbigniew Bogucki, who heads the President's Chancellery, had arrived on Monday, 26 October. According to the letter, Berek did not take the oath before the sitting president, and an oath taken in the Sejm in the presence of the Marshal of the Sejm and the Marshal of the Senate, with the president absent, cannot be treated as equivalent. As a result, the Tribunal's spokeswoman said, Berek did not enter into a service relationship as a judge of the Constitutional Tribunal.

The Sejm elected Maciej Berek to the Tribunal at the start of September. On 14 October he took the oath during a ceremony in the Sejm, using a formula that referred to doing so before the president. Berek then went to the President's Chancellery office, where he said he had taken the oath in a legally admissible form that was in fact possible. He afterwards went to the Tribunal's seat, where its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, spoke with him but did not admit him to adjudication until the president answered whether he recognised the oath made on 14 October as taken in his presence. Święczkowski said he would send that request to the president the same day.