Poland's ambassador to China Jakub Kumoch resigns as Constitutional Tribunal row escalates

The resignation

Jakub Kumoch, Poland's ambassador to China in Beijing since September 2023, announced on Friday, 30 October 2026 that he had resigned and asked to be recalled. He published the decision on X. Then-president Andrzej Duda had appointed him to the post.

“In view of events in the country, I concluded that it is no longer possible for me to continue serving as ambassador of the Republic of Poland.”

Kumoch did not say which events prompted the decision. The statement came on the same day as a sharp escalation of a dispute over the leadership of the Constitutional Tribunal. No source confirms that the resignation has been accepted or says when it would take effect.

Police action and immunity motions

On 30 October, police were deployed at the Constitutional Tribunal building in Warsaw. The Warsaw metropolitan police (Komenda Stołeczna Policji) said the intervention followed information from a Tribunal judge about possible threats to the life or health of judges and staff, as well as a risk of public order disruption. Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek announced that five motions to lift immunity had been sent to the Tribunal. Four concern the Tribunal's president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and the fifth concerns his deputy, Bartłomiej Sochański. The motions run to 224 pages and come with 50 volumes of case files. According to Żurek, police are securing the Tribunal's premises and no officers are inside the building.

Bogdan Święczkowski4

Bartłomiej Sochański1

Bogdan Święczkowski

4 motions

Bartłomiej Sochański

1 motions

Data from the article text

Dispute over who runs the Tribunal

A notice on the Tribunal's website, posted on 30 October, said Święczkowski and Sochański had been ordered to pause their duties. According to Żurek, Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska ordered the pause. Citing information it gave to PAP, the Tribunal's management was reportedly to be taken over by Korwin-Piotrowska, a claim attributed to Maciej Taborowski, Magdalena Bentkowska and Maciej Berek. The Tribunal's official account on X answered that its website had been taken over unlawfully, that Święczkowski remains president and that Korwin-Piotrowska is not a judge of the Tribunal.

Reactions

President Karol Nawrocki interrupted a trip to Senegal and returned to Poland. Protests in front of the Tribunal building were growing, and police officers were stationed there. Politicians from the opposition also appeared in front of the building. Marcin Przydacz, head of the presidential International Policy Bureau, wrote on X and linked Kumoch's resignation to what he described as the government of D. Tusk breaking the law and a forceful attack on the Constitutional Tribunal.

Who Kumoch is

According to the official biography on the embassy's website, Kumoch is an orientalist and political scientist. He studied at the University of Warsaw and earned a doctorate in social sciences from the Jagiellonian University in 2015. He was ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein from 2016 to 2020 and headed the Polish mission in Turkey from 2020 to 2021. From 2021 to 2023 he was secretary of state and head of the International Policy Bureau at the President's Chancellery. Earlier he worked as an analyst at the Centre for Eastern Studies and the Polish Institute of International Affairs, was a PAP correspondent in Russia and wrote for the daily Dziennik.