Polish President Nawrocki Cuts Short Flight Home as Police Enter Constitutional Tribunal

Somewhere over the flight path to Senegal, Poland's President Karol Nawrocki changed course. Word had reached him that police had entered the Constitutional Tribunal, the country's top court, and that the tribunal's president had been suspended. He posted on X that at such a moment the president must be in Poland, said he was interrupting his flight, and wrote that he was returning.

The suspended official is Bogdan Święczkowski, who was appointed to lead the tribunal under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government and had earlier served as a deputy justice minister. According to the tribunal's own website, he was suspended on Friday. He had declined to let judges elected by the current parliamentary majority take up their duties, which is the core of the standoff. Police said they secured the building after dozens of protesters gathered to object to what they called the wrongful suspension of the court's president by the pro-European government. Police also said dangerous objects were thrown at officers outside. Some demonstrators were seen praying. Others held posters reading "Tusk — a symbol of anti-Polish sentiment," "Down with the commies and Tusk's regime," and "Stop destroying the state."

The fight over Poland's judicial bodies, the Constitutional Tribunal chief among them, has run through the politics of the country for years. PiS governed from 2015 to 2023, and critics accuse it of imposing political control over key judicial institutions. Some of its reforms led the European Union to fine Poland. Donald Tusk returned as prime minister in 2023 promising to restore the judiciary's independence.

Nawrocki, an ally of PiS, is part of the deadlock. Earlier this year he refused to swear in three of the six judges nominated by parliament. Since Tusk took office, his government's efforts have been vetoed by two successive presidents aligned with PiS, Nawrocki among them.

Tusk framed the day's events as a duty. "Restoring the rule of law is our duty," he said, and on X he added that after years of PiS-led lawlessness the process is difficult, sometimes painful, and requires decisive action. "There is no other way," he wrote.

The opposition used far sharper language. Former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, a former PiS member whose Rozwój Plus coalition is positioning itself as an alternative to Tusk ahead of next November's parliamentary elections, denounced what he called the forceful takeover of the tribunal. He said justice cannot be achieved through violence, that Tusk will stop at nothing to cling to power, and that Poland does not consent to "Belarusian methods." He also described the mechanism as he sees it: a judge whose oath Nawrocki never accepted declared herself head of the tribunal and suspended its leadership while police secured the building. The tribunal's crisis is real, he said, but replacing one disputed set of rules with a more radical one only invites the next government to do the same.

Former PiS Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro went further, writing that a coup d'état is underway. He compared the episode to a forcible takeover of the Prime Minister's Office and called for resistance that is loud, firm, solidary and fearless.

U.S. Ambassador to Poland Tom Rose weighed in with a statement calling the events "very serious indeed" and describing an apparently unprecedented confrontation over the government's use of state power and the independence of a constitutional institution. He noted that both sides give sharply different accounts, and said thousands gathering outside the tribunal make an already dangerous situation more combustible. Rose said America is on Poland's side but that it is not the U.S.'s place to judge or interfere in internal affairs.

The crowd figures differ: police spoke of dozens of protesters, while the ambassador referred to thousands. What happens next depends on whether the dispute over judicial appointments hardens further as Poland heads toward parliamentary elections next November.