A late-night confrontation at Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal on Friday brought riot police and protesters to the scene and prompted President Karol Nawrocki to turn his plane around and return to Warsaw. The incident has renewed a bitter argument over whether Prime Minister Donald Tusk is trying to restore the rule of law or exceeding his constitutional authority.
The dispute began after the tribunal announced that its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, had been suspended. Tusk’s supporters called the move necessary to restore judicial independence. Critics said it was an unconstitutional seizure of power.
Marcin Przydacz, head of the International Policy Bureau in Nawrocki’s office, condemned the government’s actions during a European television interview Monday. He said even lawyers sympathetic to Tusk’s government saw no legal basis for what had happened.
The turmoil is also affecting Poland’s diplomatic corps. At least three ambassadors have resigned in protest, Przydacz said. Krzysztof Szczerski, Poland’s permanent representative to the United Nations since 2021, resigned Monday, after the ambassadors to China and Romania stepped down over the weekend.
“This crisis didn’t begin on Friday,” said Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, a senior European envoy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. She said Poland has faced a deeply compromised Constitutional Tribunal for more than a decade.
Rodan-Benzaquen said the latest confrontation is part of a wider institutional dispute. Parliament has continued appointing judges under the constitution, but some have been prevented from taking office during a long-running standoff involving the government, the presidency and the tribunal.
She said the situation was not simply a matter of Tusk trying to reshape an independent court before an election. The institutional crisis predates his government, she said, although how to resolve it remains a real question.
The conflict came into public view Friday when Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska suspended Święczkowski and his deputy. Protests followed outside the tribunal, and Nawrocki abandoned a planned trip to Senegal. Police detained three people after some demonstrators clashed with officers near the court complex.
Rodan-Benzaquen said concerns about the government’s actions extend beyond the opposition, raising serious questions about whether the methods were legal and proportionate.
Some government critics have called Friday’s events an unprecedented attack on Poland’s constitutional order. Nile Gardner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, called it an attempted coup by Tusk and said Margaret Thatcher would have been appalled.
Gardner said the events resembled a Soviet-style coup operation. He accused Tusk of acting while Nawrocki was out of the country and of weakening the tribunal ahead of next year’s election. He described Poland’s situation as extremely dangerous.
Others reject the coup label. Boštjan Udovič, chair of international relations at the University of Ljubljana, said the dispute is rooted in efforts to restore judicial arrangements that critics of the former Law and Justice government consider inconsistent with Poland’s constitution and European legal standards.
Udovič said Tusk was seeking to restore the system in line with the constitution and international institutions, though he may have expected the transition to be easier.
Tusk has defended his government’s approach as an effort to restore the rule of law. He accused Nawrocki and the tribunal of improperly preventing judges elected by parliament from taking office. On Monday, Tusk said the president should recognize those judges, arguing that the constitution requires it. He also accused Nawrocki of choosing a forceful confrontation that could seriously harm Poland, adding that a democratic state governed by law should not give way to violence.
Rodan-Benzaquen said restoring the rule of law is essential, but cautioned that the legitimacy of the effort depends both on its purpose and on whether the methods are lawful.
The dispute has drawn sharply differing reactions from European institutions and political leaders. The European Commission has largely supported parliament’s authority to appoint judges. European Commissioner Michael McGrath said the selection of new judges falls within parliament’s powers.
French opposition leader Marine Le Pen accused Brussels of applying a double standard. She argued that the European Union cannot claim to defend democracy and the rule of law while staying silent when a member state’s constitutional balance is threatened. The use of forceful tactics within the bloc, she said, raises serious questions.
U.S. Ambassador to Poland Tom Rose urged restraint, saying the United States supports Poland’s stability, security and democratic future. Poland, he said, has achieved too much to let political disagreements put those gains at risk.
Rodan-Benzaquen said the conflict goes beyond Friday’s events. Each side claims to be defending the constitutional order from the other, while the institutions meant to settle the dispute have themselves become part of it.
With Poland’s parliamentary election a year away, the fight over who defines the rule of law could have greater consequences than the confrontation this weekend. Gardner blamed Tusk and his government for what he called an extremely dangerous situation.
