On October 30, representatives of the group elected as judges of the Constitutional Tribunal in this term of the Sejm announced that Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, as the oldest judge, became the head of the Constitutional Tribunal and issued an order on a break in the activities of the President of the Constitutional Tribunal, Bogdan Święczkowski, and Vice-President Bartłomiej Sochański.
In the latest statement made available to the media on Friday, Korwin-Piotrowska recalled that in 2022 Święczkowski became the chairman of the adjudicating panel, and in 2024 the president of the Constitutional Tribunal. In her opinion, Święczkowski failed to fulfill his duties, including "efficient and reliable examination of cases" in both positions.
She cited as an example the case of a constitutional complaint filed in January 2017. This case was filed almost 10 years ago. Nothing has been done about this matter since 2019, she noted.
“These issues were a priority for him.”
She emphasized that in 2026 Święczkowski "did not hear, was not a rapporteur and did not issue a judgment in a single case involving citizens' constitutional complaints." Judgments have been made in these cases, she said.
The head of the Constitutional Tribunal announced that this situation would change. We are taking action now, checking the files, verifying and we will move the cases forward one by one so that civil rights and liberties are actually guaranteed and resolved in a way that will then serve as a basis for possibly resuming proceedings, she said.
Escalation of tension around TK
Changes to the Constitutional Tribunal were announced on October 30. On that day, representatives of the group of Constitutional Tribunal judges newly elected by the Sejm announced that Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, as the oldest judge, had become the head of the Tribunal. It issued an order suspending the activities of president Bogdan Święczkowski and vice-president Bartłomiej Sochański.
The decision to suspend Święczkowski and Sochański caused an immediate reaction. Protests intensified in front of the Constitutional Tribunal's headquarters. President Karol Nawrocki interrupted his trip to Senegal and returned to Warsaw to meet with the First President of the Supreme Court, Zbigniew Kapiński, and then went to the Tribunal.
On October 31 in the morning, the president issued a statement in which he stated that "there was a violation of the constitutional order of the Republic of Poland and a forcible takeover of a constitutional organ of the state." A day later, Prime Minister Donald Tusk emphasized in a speech that the Sejm of the current term had elected new judges of the Constitutional Tribunal, but the president did not take the oath from some of them, and President Święczkowski prevented them from taking up work. When, after many weeks of waiting, they decided to take up their duties, they were attacked, Tusk said.
Dispute over the legality of actions and court decisions
On Tuesday, November 3, the General Assembly of the Constitutional Tribunal's Judges was convened by Korwin-Piotrowska, during which a resolution on the Tribunal's budget for 2027 was adopted. The Chancellery of the President announced a notification to the prosecutor's office about the possibility of committing a crime, pointing out that the General Assembly can only be convened by the president of the Constitutional Tribunal, and there was no required quorum on Tuesday.
On Friday, the Supreme Court found it incompetent to hear the complaints of Bogdan Święczkowski and Bartłomiej Sochański against the orders on immediate breaks in the performance of their duties as Constitutional Tribunal judges. The case was referred to the Constitutional Tribunal.
