Conflict over the Constitutional Court: Former court presidents support Poland's government

Warsaw. In the dispute over Poland's Constitutional Court, four former presidents of the Court have supported the pro-European government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk. President Karol Nawrocki's actions, on the other hand, are an "unprecedented violation of the court's autonomy" and do not contribute to resolving the conflict, the four lawyers wrote in a jointly published statement.

“The judges lawfully appointed to the Constitutional Court by Parliament have taken the necessary measures to restore the functions and status of this state institution, crucial to the rule of law and to the protection of civil rights and freedoms,” the letter said. The authors are the former Constitutional Court Presidents Marek Safjan, Jerzy Stepien, Bohdan Zdziennicki and Andrzej Zoll.

The long-simmering power struggle between the two major political camps over the appointment of the Constitutional Court escalated on Friday. The trigger was an announcement on the website of the Constitutional Court. It said that the previous President Bogdan Swieczkowski and his deputy had been temporarily relieved of their functions. Instead, judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska will lead the court.

The right-wing conservative PiS, which ruled the country from 2015 to 2023, has filled the court with judges who are politically close to it. Since the change of government in autumn 2023, Tusk's center-left coalition has been trying to fill vacant positions for constitutional judges.

The lawyer Korwin-Piotrowska is one of the five new constitutional judges who were nominated by parliament but are still unable to take up their work. The right-wing conservative President Nawrocki refused to swear her in. And Constitutional Court President Bogdan Swieczkowski denied them access to the building.

“The Constitutional Court has been in a deep crisis for over 10 years,” said the statement from the four former court presidents. The judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ), which would have required the restoration of the function of the Constitutional Court as an independent and impartial institution, would not be implemented. “As long as this does not happen, citizens are deprived of an effective defense of their rights and freedoms and cannot lodge an individual constitutional complaint.”

The steps taken by the constitutional judges led by Korwin-Piotrowska were aimed at restoring the constitutional functioning of the court. It is important that the constitutional judges are allowed to convene the general assembly announced by Korwin-Piotrowska for November 3rd. There they could decide on the withdrawal of judicial immunity from Court President Swieczkowski and his deputy, as requested by the Attorney General.