"Coup" or Return of the Law: Police Surround Poland's Constitutional Court and the President Turns His Plane Around

The Constitutional Court's fence cut with a power tool, police around the building, a presidential plane turning back on its way to Senegal. The scene is from Warsaw, capital of an EU member state, on the evening of 30 October.

Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska announced she was suspending Constitutional Court President Bogdan Święczkowski and his deputy Bartłomiej Sochański for a month and taking over the leadership herself. She accused Święczkowski of blocking the work of the new judges and of irregularities in assigning cases. Police surrounded the court and didn't let Święczkowski in, after his supporters cut away part of the fence. Seven newly elected judges entered the building escorted by the State Protection Service, through a gate from the prime minister's chancellery.

The court responded on its profile that this was a coup and that Korwin-Piotrowska isn't a Constitutional Court judge at all. Jarosław Kaczyński declared that Poland had become a police state. "Restoring the rule of law is our duty," wrote Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

A three-year-old dispute

To understand who is accusing whom, you have to go back. Since 2023 Tusk's government hasn't recognised the court's legitimacy, because three judges were unlawfully appointed under PiS. Parliament has since elected eight new judges, but President Karol Nawrocki refused to swear in five of them, including Korwin-Piotrowska. The five took their oath in parliament. Święczkowski didn't accept them, despite an order from the European Court of Human Rights to let them take office.

So one side ignores Strasbourg, and the other suspends a court's head on a legal basis experts dispute. Constitutional lawyer Marcin Matczak argues that the law the suspension cites, the one on ordinary courts, simply doesn't apply here. Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek wants immunity lifted for Święczkowski and Sochański. So who is defending the constitution?

Muscle in front of a judge

Nawrocki turned the plane around and wrote that at a moment like this the president must be in Poland. Early on the morning of 31 October he entered the court building together with the First President of the Supreme Court, Zbigniew Kapiński, who called the events a coup. In an emergency television address Tusk attacked Nawrocki over the confrontation with Korwin-Piotrowska at the entrance: "The rule of law differs from the law of the jungle in that muscle and arrogance don't decide who is right."

The prime minister also accused the opposition of having support from pro-Russian circles and from "an army of Russian bots", and asked of his opponents' motives whether it was a matter of "greed, stupidity or treason". Nawrocki called urgent consultations with the parliamentary parties. On the way out of the crisis Tusk was clear: "On certain issues there can be no compromise."

The Balkans know this script: every new government says it is cleansing the judiciary of the previous one, and the previous one calls it a coup. The difference is that under PiS it was the EU accusing the court of being too close to power, and now the cleansing is led by a pro-European prime minister. Law as a weapon is bad when others hold it. Does it get better when your own side does?

Korwin-Piotrowska has called a general assembly of judges for 3 November. Whether those who sit down there are judges at all depends on who you ask. That, in fact, is the entire crisis.