WARSAW (The Thursday Times) — Polish President Karol Nawrocki turned his plane around mid-flight to Senegal on Friday after police entered the Constitutional Tribunal and its president was suspended, deepening a confrontation that the court itself described as a “coup d’état”.
“At a moment like this, the President must be in Poland. I am cutting short my flight to Senegal. I am returning,” Nawrocki, who was travelling to the Summer Youth Olympic Games, wrote on X, as riot police were deployed outside the tribunal in Warsaw.
The suspension of the tribunal’s president, Bogdan Święczkowski, was announced by tribunal judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska. Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek told reporters he had asked for the immunity of Święczkowski and his deputy, Bartłomiej Sochański, to be lifted.
The tribunal hit back on its official X account. “Ms. Anna Korwin-Piotrowska is not a judge of the Constitutional Tribunal,” it said. “All persons participating in these actions are committing the crime of a coup d’état.”
Dozens of police officers guarded the building as supporters of the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS) gathered to protest, chanting “Tusk traitor”, according to AFP. Some prayed holding rosaries and religious images.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government has been trying to remove tribunal judges appointed under the previous PiS administration, which ruled from 2015 to 2023 and which the European Union accused of politicising the court. The tribunal ruled several times during that period that Polish law took precedence over EU law. Tusk promised to end the dispute with Brussels after winning the 2023 election, but Nawrocki, who is aligned with PiS, has blocked his appointments to the court.
Tusk defended the move. “Restoring the rule of law is our duty. After years of Law and Justice’s lawlessness, this is a difficult, sometimes painful process that requires decisive action. There is no other way,” he wrote on social media. Żurek said Święczkowski and his deputy should face criminal charges for preventing lawfully elected judges from sitting.
The European Court of Human Rights and the EU’s Court of Justice have ruled that the PiS-era majority improperly appointed three judges and that the tribunal is no longer an “independent and impartial tribunal”; Tusk’s government has since stopped publishing its rulings. Nawrocki has refused to swear in five judges elected by parliament since March, among them Korwin-Piotrowska, who has now been put in temporary charge of the court, despite the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission urging him this month to do so.
Even some critics of the PiS-era reforms questioned the government’s methods. Lawyer Marcin Matczak said the suspension had no legal basis and warned that “images of armed police” outside the court would provoke “a powerful, anti-rule of law backlash for years to come”. Poland holds parliamentary elections next year.
