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# Poland’s Constitutional Court Seized in Rival Power Claims
- URL: https://www.theoceaniacables.com/polands-constitutional-court-seized-in-rival-power-claims/
- Published: 2026-10-31T04:49:26.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-31T04:49:26.000Z
- Description: Tusk's government escorts judges into Poland's top court as Nawrocki flies back; rivals trade claims of coup and rule-of-law restoration.
- Author: The Oceania Cables
- Tags: Poland, Politics

## **Summary:**

Polish police deployed in large numbers around the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw on the evening of 30 October 2026, after a judge elected by the current Sejm announced that she had suspended the Tribunal's president and vice-president for one month. Seven judges elected by the current parliament were escorted into the building by State Protection Service officers. Polish outlets reported that police held the Tribunal's president, Bogdan Święczkowski, behind a cordon on the grounds and prevented him from entering the building. President Karol Nawrocki, in the air on his way to Senegal, ordered his plane to turn back. He landed late in the evening and entered the Tribunal after midnight.

The two camps describe the same evening in incompatible terms. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said restoring the rule of law after years of lawlessness under the former Law and Justice government required decisive action. Jarosław Kaczyński, the Law and Justice leader, called it an assault on the Tribunal and said Poland was becoming a police state. The Tribunal's official X account said its website had been unlawfully taken over and that all those taking part were committing a coup d'état. Zbigniew Kapiński, chief justice of the Supreme Court, called the events undoubtedly a coup. Warsaw police said officers were performing statutory duties on the grounds after a request citing threats to judges and staff, and that they had not entered the building.

The dispute runs back to 2015 and turns on who is lawfully a judge of the court: Nawrocki has refused to swear in several judges elected by the Sejm this year, they have sworn alternative oaths in parliament instead, and the Tribunal's existing leadership has refused to let them sit. Nothing was resolved on the night, and the status of the suspended officers, the judges who entered and control of the court's website and accounts all remain contested.

## **Detailed Report**

### **1\. Poland's Divided Executive**

Poland is a parliamentary republic. The Council of Ministers, led by the prime minister, conducts day-to-day government and is accountable to the Sejm, the lower house of parliament. The president is directly elected for a five-year term and holds separate powers, including a legislative veto and a formal role in judicial appointments. Since the election of President Karol Nawrocki in 2025, the presidency and the government have been held by opposing political camps.

The Constitutional Tribunal is Poland's constitutional court. Fifteen judges, elected by the Sejm for single nine-year terms, rule on whether statutes and international agreements conform to the Constitution, settle disputes over competence between state bodies, hear constitutional complaints from individuals, and may examine the aims and activities of political parties. Its judgments are universally binding. After the Sejm elects a judge, the president administers the oath of office, and that narrow power is the hinge of the present dispute.

Neither side of the divided executive can remove the other. The government cannot dismiss the president, and the president cannot dismiss a prime minister who holds the Sejm's confidence. The court that would ordinarily arbitrate between them is the disputed institution itself.

### **2\. Who Is a Judge? The Dispute Behind 30 October**

The conflict began in 2015\. After the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) took power, the then-majority appointed judges in ways European courts later held to be improper, including three elected to seats that were already filled; those courts went on to find that the Tribunal had lost the character of an independent and impartial tribunal. Prime Minister Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition won the 2023 election, but the court stayed with its predecessors. Its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, was appointed under the Law and Justice government and is aligned with that camp and with Nawrocki. The government refused to recognise the Tribunal's legitimacy and stopped publishing many of its rulings. Three years into its term, the coalition holds parliament and the government while the court remains with the opposition.

The present stage began in 2026, when the Sejm majority started electing judges to fill vacancies and Nawrocki declined to swear several of them in. In March the Sejm elected six; Nawrocki invited only two, Dariusz Szostek and Magdalena Bentkowska, to take the oath at the Presidential Palace. The other four held an alternative ceremony in the Sejm and submitted written oaths, and Święczkowski's leadership refused to let them sit. In September the Sejm elected Maciej Berek, a former minister in Tusk's cabinet, and Nawrocki refused to receive his oath.

Nawrocki gave two reasons. Formally, he said Berek had not shown satisfactory evidence of having practised as a legal counsel for the required ten years, and that a certificate from the regional chamber of legal advisers did not confirm he had actually exercised the profession. Substantively, he argued that moving directly from a senior executive role to the Tribunal would not restore public confidence in the court's independence, noting that members of the governing coalition had themselves opposed such appointments on those grounds. He has called the alternative Sejm ceremony a circus and maintains that the oath must be taken before the president in person.

Two authorities have since ruled in opposite directions. In May 2026, on a motion brought by Law and Justice deputies, the Tribunal held that the statute imposes no absolute obligation on the president to administer the oath, and that it must be taken in his physical presence. In October the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe's advisory body on constitutional matters, reached the opposite conclusion in opinion CDL-AD(2026)031\. It found the president's role to be essentially ceremonial: he must administer the oath without delay, and he has no power to review the Sejm's choice or examine a candidate's qualifications. Where a president refuses without justification, the Commission said, the judge may swear the oath in the Sejm, have it notarised and submit it to the Chancellery. The opinion is advisory and carries no force in Polish law. Berek took the oath in the Sejm on 14 October, addressing it to the absent president. Neither Nawrocki nor the Tribunal's leadership recognises him as a judge.

### **3\. Police Deploy Around Constitutional Tribunal as Rival Judges Move In**

The deadlock broke on the evening of 30 October. A judge elected by the current Sejm suspended the Tribunal's president and vice-president; seven judges who have not been sworn in by Nawrocki were escorted into the building by state officers; and the court's existing leadership was kept outside by police.

Supporters of Law and Justice had been camped on the grounds for weeks to prevent exactly that, in tents and with flags and banners. Rumours had circulated for months that the government would install the judges elected by the current Sejm on the court by force. At a demonstration outside the Tribunal on 17 October, party leader Jarosław Kaczyński told the crowd that the Tribunal and the National Bank of Poland were the last major institutions the government did not control.

On the evening of 30 October the encampment was joined by a larger crowd. Kaczyński was among them, with former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki and former Tribunal president Julia Przyłębska. Some demonstrators cut the perimeter fence with a power tool. Chants of "Tusk traitor" were reported, and some participants carried rosaries and religious images.

Riot police deployed in large numbers around the building to keep demonstrators out, and three people were detained after climbing the fence. Polish outlets reported that after the fence was cut, Święczkowski reached the grounds, showed his identification to the police line, and was then stopped by the cordon from going further toward the building. He withdrew after calling for calm, and spoke outside instead, saying that the Tribunal is its judges rather than its building and that what was taking place was a crime against the state. Vice-President Bartłomiej Sochański was reported to have been refused entry as well.

While the police held the perimeter, the State Protection Service, which guards protected persons and answers to the interior minister, escorted seven judges elected by the current Sejm into the building. They entered through a side gate connected to the prime minister's chancellery rather than the main entrance.

A notice appeared on the Tribunal's website announcing that Święczkowski and Sochański had been suspended from their duties for one month under Article 130 of the law on the system of common courts. It did not say who had issued the order. Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, one of the judges elected by the current Sejm who has not taken the oath before the president, later confirmed to the public broadcaster TVP that it was hers, and that she had been among those escorted inside. She accused Święczkowski of blocking newly elected judges from taking their seats and of irregularities in the assignment of cases.

Waldemar Żurek, the justice minister and prosecutor general, announced separately that he had submitted motions to waive the immunity of Święczkowski and Sochański. The documents were delivered to Korwin-Piotrowska, who had claimed authority over the court as its longest-serving judge.

Control of the court's own communications was contested within the hour. The suspension notice had gone up on the website, while the Tribunal's official X account continued to speak for Święczkowski's leadership and said the website had been unlawfully taken over.

Warsaw police gave their account of the deployment. Officers were on the grounds performing statutory duties, the force said, after Korwin-Piotrowska warned of possible threats to the lives and health of judges and staff and of a risk to public order. Dangerous objects had been thrown at officers during the demonstration. "Police are carrying out their statutory duties with respect for the independence of the Constitutional Tribunal and within the limits of their legal powers," the statement said. Police emphasised that they had not entered the building and that the officers outside had been called by an authorised person.

Opposition accounts describe the night differently, as a forcible entry and seizure of the premises. Whether police went inside is reported differently across contemporaneous accounts.

While this was happening, President Nawrocki was in the air on his way to Senegal. He posted on X that he was interrupting the flight and returning to Poland, and the aircraft turned back.

### **4\. President Nawrocki Returns to a Seized Court**

Nawrocki landed in Warsaw shortly before 22:00 and met Kapiński and Święczkowski at the Presidential Palace, in a meeting the Chancellery confirmed.

Shortly before 1 a.m. he went to the Tribunal with Kapiński, joined later by Zbigniew Bogucki, the head of his chancellery, and entered the building. The judges elected by the current Sejm were waiting at a side entrance for security reasons, Korwin-Piotrowska at their front, intending to greet the president and invite him to a meeting room prepared for the purpose. Earlier that evening she had offered to meet him alone, excluding Święczkowski and Kapiński, citing safety concerns.

What happened at the door is disputed. In Berek's account, Nawrocki arrived energetically, did not stop, ran into Korwin-Piotrowska with force and pushed through the group of judges. The presidential spokesman, Rafał Leśkiewicz, said the judges tried to block the president's entry and violated the inviolability of his office — a criminal offence. No injuries were reported, and neither side has departed from its version.

On the stairs inside, Korwin-Piotrowska told the president: "We are judges of the Constitutional Tribunal." He replied: "You are not. You are not judges of the Constitutional Tribunal and you are taking over this building illegally." Bogucki added that this was how a coup d'état is carried out.

Berek said people identifying themselves as Chancellery staff then tried to take the keys to the Tribunal's rooms. Nawrocki stayed inside for several hours with Bogucki and Kapiński. No decisions or outcomes from the visit have been reported.

### **5\. Lawful or a Coup: Both Camps Make Their Case**

No court has ruled on whether any of this was lawful. The two camps describe the same evening as the restoration of a captured institution and as a coup against one.

Tusk set out the government's position on X. "Restoring the rule of law is our duty," he wrote. "After years of PiS-led lawlessness, this is a difficult process, sometimes painful, and it requires decisive action. There is no other way."

The legal argument runs through Article 130 of the law on the system of common courts, which allows a court president or the justice minister to suspend a judge from duty for up to a month where the dignity of the court or essential service interests require it. Judges elected by the current Sejm say the provision reaches the Constitutional Tribunal by cross-reference from other statutes, and Korwin-Piotrowska argued that since no authority sits above the Tribunal's president, the longest-serving judge could act to prevent impunity. She claimed that role under Article 12(4) of the 2016 act on the Tribunal's organisation, which provides for the longest-serving judge to direct the court when its president cannot authorise anyone else to do so, counting her own service from the start of her judicial apprenticeship in September 1995\. Against all this, Marcin Matczak, a constitutional scholar, says Article 130 governs the ordinary judiciary alone and that the justice minister holds no equivalent power over the Tribunal.

Żurek filed five motions to lift the two men's immunity, four concerning Święczkowski and one Sochański, running to 224 pages and accompanied by 50 volumes of case files. He said both should face criminal charges, citing among other matters their refusal to admit the Sejm-elected judges to work. The motions fall to be decided by the Tribunal, the court whose leadership is itself in dispute.

Kaczyński made the opposing case outside the building and on X:

> "An assault on the Constitutional Tribunal! Tusk's services are forcibly entering the Tribunal! This is the first such case anywhere in the world. From today Poland is becoming a police state, and from there it is a straight road to authoritarianism, and then to totalitarianism. We Poles cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated! Citizens' protest, entirely legal, must continue! The Tribunal is the guarantor of our freedom and sovereignty!"

He appealed to Nawrocki to use every power available to him to stop the process, and said that coups are serious crimes against the state.

The Tribunal's official X account rejected the suspensions outright, denied that Korwin-Piotrowska is a judge of the court, and said that all those taking part were committing the crime of a coup d'état. Zbigniew Kapiński, chief justice of the Supreme Court and not a party to the appointment dispute, told the broadcaster Kanał Zero that he was appalled and that the events were "undoubtedly a coup d'etat." Article 130 has never before been applied to Poland's constitutional court.

### **Conclusion**

Poland's constitutional court remains under contested control after the events of 30 October. Judges elected by the current Sejm hold the building under a suspension order whose legal basis is disputed, while the court's president and vice-president say they remain in office and no court has ruled on the question. Police say they never entered the building; opposition accounts say otherwise.

Nawrocki spent several hours inside the Tribunal after midnight and left without any reported decisions. No disciplinary ruling on the suspensions has been scheduled. The dispute over who lawfully sits on the court — the question that produced the night — remains unresolved.