Poland’s centrist government deployed riot police at the country’s Constitutional Tribunal late Friday, amid an escalating confrontation between the prime minister, the president and allies of the previous right-wing government.
The police intervention followed an effort Friday by a group of government-backed judges to take control of the tribunal, the nation’s top court, from its chief justice, who is aligned with the previous government of Law and Justice, a hard-right nationalist party.
Ever since its election in 2022, the centrist coalition government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk has been feuding with Law and Justice, which lost power in that vote. Among the most critical issues in the feud is the composition of the Constitutional Tribunal, which Law and Justice stacked with right-wing judges under the previous government.
Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki, who was elected last year with support from Law and Justice and President Trump, interrupted a trip to Senegal to rush back to Warsaw. His plane turned around midair so that the president, a bitter foe of the current government, could join the fracas at the Constitutional Tribunal.
The situation at the court was murky on Saturday: Inside, Mr. Nawrocki was in a standoff with the pro-government judges, while protesters in support of Law and Justice had gathered outside, held back by the police.
Bogdan Swieczkowski, the chief justice who was suspended by the government-backed judges, was not in the building. He said he would meet with allied judges on Saturday to decide what to do, adding that if the tribunal remained surrounded by the police, “We might end up issuing rulings from other locations.”
Adding to the confusion and acrimony, while the pro-government judges took control of the tribunal’s website, Mr. Swieczkowski’s supporters still held the court’s social media account, which they used to accuse their rivals of “committing the crime of a coup d’etat.”
For supporters of Prime Minister Tusk’s government, the struggle for control of the tribunal is an essential part of an effort by a democratically elected administration to reverse Law and Justice’s capture of the courts and other nominally independent institutions during its eight years in power between 2015 and 2023. Their opponents see it as an authoritarian push.
The election last year of Mr. Nawrocki as president, a largely ceremonial post, turned what had been a slow-burn struggle into a full-blown crisis when he refused to invite five new Constitutional Tribunal judges appointed by Parliament to the presidential palace to take their oaths.
Mr. Tusk’s government argues that the constitutional court, which has repeatedly blocked legislation enacted by Parliament, is illegitimate because several of its judges were appointed improperly during Law and Justice’s time in power. European courts ruled that these appointments meant that the Polish court was no longer an “independent and impartial tribunal,” but Law and Justice argues that these outside courts have no jurisdiction.
Mr. Tusk, in a post on X, said: “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.”
With elections for a new Parliament looming next year, Mr. Tusk has come under increasing pressure from supporters to break the deadlock over the court so that the government can deliver on its legislative agenda before its time in office runs out.
Judges backed by Mr. Tusk’s government used the tribunal’s website to announce on Saturday that the chief justice, Mr. Swieczkowski, had been suspended from his duties. The move followed years of legal wrangling.
Mr. Swieczkowski tried later to enter the building after supporters of Law and Justice, who have held demonstrations outside the tribunal for weeks, cut a fence with power tools.
Warsaw’s police department, in a statement, said that it had sent officers to the court “in response to information provided by a judge of the Constitutional Tribunal, which indicated the potential for threats to the life or health of the Tribunal’s judges and staff, as well as a risk of public disorder.”
Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting.
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