WARSAW — The battle over who rules Poland is being fought in front of a cream-colored palace in central Warsaw — surrounded by police and protesters — that houses the country’s top constitutional court. Liberal, pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk wants to roll back changes to the Constitutional Tribunal made by the previous nationalist right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party government, while President Karol Nawrocki is fighting — even physically — to keep the PiS-aligned judges in charge. The government insists the court must be overhauled to restore rule of law and conform with EU norms on impartiality, while Nawrocki’s supporters accuse Tusk of backing a coup.
The clash comes to a head on Tuesday, when the eight judges backed by Tusk’s ruling parliamentary coalition plan to hold a meeting to approve the tribunal’s budget and consider disciplinary proceedings against its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and his deputy, Bartłomiej Sochański. They need a quorum of 10 of the court’s 15 judges to be present — meaning they need to peel away at least two justices chosen under the previous PiS government that ruled from 2015 to 2023. The fight over the control of the tribunal is helping bring right-wing opposition parties together ahead of next year’s parliamentary election.
The crowd outside the tribunal protesting against Tusk’s government included PiS co-founder Jarosław Kaczyński alongside Grzegorz Braun, an extreme-right Polexit campaigner and antisemite whom Kaczyński had previously ruled out governing with. This time round, they took a selfie. Other right-wing leaders at the rally included former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and libertarian Sławomir Mentzen.
But ending Prime Minister Tusk’s government is the fundamental common goal,” Anna Bryłka, vice president of Mentzen’s Confederation party, told POLITICO. Tusk’s Civic Coalition leads POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, but its smaller partners might not make it into the next parliament, opening the way for PiS and other right-wing parties, provided their leaders are able to work together. The scale of the crisis could also galvanize Tusk’s supporters, who have been disappointed by the government’s failure to move rapidly to restore the rule of law.
If a [right-wing] coalition came to power, they would eliminate independent institutions that could hold them to account, and take Poland out of the European Union, something they have openly discussed,” Borys Budka, a Civic Coalition member of the European Parliament and a former justice minister, told POLITICO. Kaczyński last week raised the possibility of a Polexit. In October 2015, the Civic Platform-led parliamentary majority elected five Constitutional Tribunal judges — three to fill existing vacancies and two for seats coming open after a parliamentary election set for December.
It was an attempt to do an end-run around PiS, which was leading in the polls and which won the election. Although the tribunal later ruled that the two extra judges were improperly chosen, the new PiS majority went much further by declaring all five selections void, electing five replacements and having them sworn in by PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda. The legitimacy of the three new justices chosen to replace the properly elected ones was called into question.
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