Poland's Tusk and Nawrocki clash over Constitutional Tribunal as president sets six-day deadline

How the standoff began

On Friday, 30 October, judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, one of five judges whose appointments the governing coalition backed, suspended the tribunal's president Bogdan Swieczkowski and his deputy Bartlomiej Sochanski, both of whom the opposition supports. Riot police were deployed, and the building has since stayed cordoned off. Although the situation has calmed, a few hundred supporters of the opposition keep gathering day and night at its gates. El País reports that Nawrocki, who was flying to Senegal, turned back, landed in Warsaw and forced his way into the tribunal while riot police guarded the building. The feud goes back to years of Law and Justice (PiS) control over the court, and Nawrocki belongs to that party.

The government's case and Tusk's response

Tusk's government says the court must be reformed to restore the rule of law and meet EU standards on impartiality, and it wants to reverse the changes PiS made to the institution. Supporters of Nawrocki accuse Tusk of backing a coup. Tusk rejected those accusations and offered a private one-on-one meeting to ease tensions, but Berliner Zeitung reports that no such meeting had been announced by Thursday, 5 November. Irish Times notes that Tusk's government has run into repeated vetoes from two successive presidents allied with the opposition. On Tuesday, 3 November, the eight judges backed by Tusk's coalition met to approve the court's budget and to discuss starting disciplinary proceedings against Swieczkowski and Sochanski, according to Adevarul.

Six days, no legal force

The same Tuesday, Nawrocki addressed the nation on television at the opening of a National Security Council session, and its deliberations were closed to the public. He gave Tusk six days to stop what he called an illegal takeover of the country's highest court, but he did not demand the prime minister's resignation. He said he would use all of his constitutional powers to prevent what he described as an attempt to undermine the constitutional order, without saying which tools he meant. The deadline binds no one. Poland's constitution gives the president no power to remove a prime minister. Only the Sejm can do that, through a constructive no-confidence vote that needs at least 231 of its 460 deputies. Berliner Zeitung argues the move gives Nawrocki a political rallying point on Independence Day, a little over a year before a parliamentary election that must take place by November 2027 at the latest. Researchers who spoke to EUobserver on 2 November, before the deadline was announced, said the right was using the crisis to mobilise voters with a narrative of existential conflict.

Opposition rallies and the 2027 race

At the protest outside the tribunal, PiS co-founder Jarosław Kaczyński and Grzegorz Braun were present and posed for a selfie, although Kaczyński had earlier ruled out any joint government with Braun, according to Adevarul. Former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki and libertarian Sławomir Mentzen also attended. Confederation vice-president Anna Bryłka told POLITICO that the parties' programmes differ in many respects, but ending Tusk's government is their shared main goal. Tusk's Civic Coalition leads the POLITICO poll aggregator, yet its smaller partners might not make it into the next parliament. That would open a path for PiS and other right-wing parties, provided their leaders cooperate.

Stakes for Europe

The PiS-era handling of the court drew criticism from the EU Court of Justice over the independence of judges, and billions of euros of EU funds due to Poland were frozen as a result, according to The Irish Times. In 2021 the tribunal challenged the primacy of EU law, giving constitutional cover to PiS's contested reforms. Critics sympathetic to the reform warn that Tusk's heavy-handed tactics may encourage future governments to take revenge in kind. The Irish Times expects Tusk to push ahead regardless, with a general election due next year.