Poland deploys riot police at Constitutional Tribunal as government suspends its top justices

Riot police were deployed at Poland's Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw after the government suspended its two most senior justices and sought to prosecute them.

Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek requested that the court's President Bogdan Święczkowski and Vice-President Bartłomiej Sochański be stripped of their immunity from prosecution so that criminal charges could be brought against them. Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska has been placed in temporary charge of the tribunal.

The tribunal itself rejected the move, posting on social media that Święczkowski and Sochański remained its legally appointed senior justices and warning that participants in the actions were "committing the crime of a coup d'état."

Opposition Law and Justice (PiS) politicians gathered outside the court building to protest. Riot police were deployed to prevent any demonstrators from entering the court building.

President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by PiS, ordered his plane turned back to Warsaw while en route to Senegal to attend the Summer Youth Olympic Games.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk defended the actions as necessary to restore the rule of law. In a social media post, Tusk wrote that "restoring the rule of law is our duty," and described the process as difficult and sometimes painful after years of Law and Justice's lawlessness, adding that "there is no other way" to proceed with decisive action.

The Council of Europe's advisory body on constitutional matters, the Venice Commission, earlier this month called on Nawrocki to swear in five tribunal judges elected by parliament since March whom he has refused to induct. Żurek said Święczkowski and his vice-president should face criminal charges for not allowing those judges to adjudicate.

The Constitutional Tribunal has been at the centre of Poland's long-running rule of law dispute since the PiS-led government took office in 2015. Leading European courts — the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union — subsequently ruled that Poland's Constitutional Tribunal was no longer an "independent and impartial tribunal," and Tusk's government has used those rulings as a basis to stop publishing the tribunal's rulings. Taking office in 2023, Tusk vowed to depoliticise the judiciary, but Nawrocki and his PiS-backed predecessor Andrzej Duda used presidential vetoes to block his attempts. Some of Tusk's supporters have accused him of failing to act decisively, and with parliamentary elections scheduled next year, some see his latest move as an attempt to boost his popularity among those voters.