Poland constitutional court crisis: riot police at the tribunal as President Nawrocki accuses Tusk of a takeover

Riot police were deployed at Poland's Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw on Saturday 31 October as a stand-off between Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government and the court's top judges escalated, BBC News reported. President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS), went to the court himself and called the government's move a "breach of Poland's constitutional order".

"Karol Nawrocki" was among the most searched world names in Pakistan on Saturday evening.

What happened

• The trigger: Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek asked for the court's president, Bogdan Swieczkowski, and vice-president, Bartlomiej Sochanski, to be stripped of immunity so they can face criminal charges for not letting five judges elected by parliament hear cases.
• A new acting head: one of those five, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, has been put in temporary charge of the court.
• The court's reply: in a post on social media the tribunal said the two judges were still its lawful leaders and that "all persons participating in these actions are committing the crime of a coup d'etat".
• The president's U-turn: Nawrocki cancelled a flight to Senegal mid-air, where he was going to the Youth Olympic Games in Dakar, and returned to Warsaw. He said he helped the suspended court president enter the building, the Associated Press reported via the Los Angeles Times.
• Protests: hundreds of opposition supporters rallied overnight outside the court; police detained three people after objects were thrown and the security fence was pushed.

Why it is happening

PiS, in power from 2015 to 2023, appointed judges to the tribunal to secure a majority. The European Court of Human Rights and the EU's Court of Justice later ruled that three of them were elected improperly and that the tribunal was no longer "an independent and impartial tribunal". Tusk's government has since stopped publishing the court's rulings.

Tusk has not managed to undo the PiS-era changes because Nawrocki, and before him Andrzej Duda, vetoed his bills. Nawrocki has also refused to swear in the five new judges, despite the Council of Europe's Venice Commission saying this month that he should.

"Restoring the rule of law is our duty," Tusk wrote. Even some critics of PiS disagree with his method: law professor Marcin Matczak said the suspension had no legal basis and that pictures of armed police at the court "bury" the rule-of-law cause.

What comes next

Nawrocki invited all parliamentary parties to talks on Saturday; Tusk did not attend, while two of his coalition partners, Third Way and the Polish People's Party, did. Poland holds parliamentary elections next year, and the president's camp hopes the crisis will split Tusk's majority.

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