Poland: Police at constitutional court – Nawrocki aborts flight and enters the building
Constitutional Tribunal president Święczkowski has been suspended for a month. The court's old leadership speaks of a “coup d'état”, while President Nawrocki turns back from a trip to Senegal.
Archive image · Photo: Adrian Grycuk / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 pl (cropped and resized)
The dispute over Poland's Constitutional Tribunal has escalated. On Friday evening, the court's website announced that its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and his deputy, Bartłomiej Sochański, had been suspended from their duties for one month. The order came from judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, whom President Karol Nawrocki refuses to swear in, citing alleged flaws in her selection. Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek asked for the two men's immunity to be lifted.
The court's previous leadership said its website had been “unlawfully taken over” and that all those involved were committing “the crime of a coup d'état”. Supporters of the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS) gathered outside the building. According to police, objects were thrown at officers and three people were detained. Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X that the process is difficult, “at times even painful”, and requires decisive action: “There is no other way.” Former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro called the move a “criminal attack on the constitutional order”.
Nawrocki, a PiS ally, had his plane turn back near Málaga on the way to Senegal and landed in Warsaw shortly before 10 p.m. “At a moment like this, the president must be in Poland,” he wrote. According to his chief of staff Paweł Szefernaker, Nawrocki entered the court building overnight together with Supreme Court First President Zbigniew Kapiński; a published video shows a scuffle at the entrance.