{"id":2230443,"date":"2026-10-30T20:52:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T17:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2230443"},"modified":"2026-10-30T20:52:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T17:52:01","slug":"police-deployed-during-stand-off-over-control-of-top-poland-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2230443","title":{"rendered":"Police deployed during stand-off over control of top Poland court"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/308f\/live\/f44b1080-d50c-11f1-9db5-95ff6e967be3.jpg”]<\/p>\n

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\"EPA\/ShutterstockEPA\/Shutterstock<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Officers were faced down by critics of the move outside the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Riot police have been deployed at Poland’s Constitutional Court amid an escalating stand-off between the government and the court’s top judges.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The row pits the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk against his predecessors from the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS). <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The police intervention came after Justice Minister Waldemar \u017burek said he had requested stripping the court’s President Bogdan \u015awi\u0119czkowski and Vice-President Bart\u0142omiej Socha\u0144ski of their immunity from prosecution to bring criminal charges against them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Tusk has vowed to depoliticise the judiciary, and on Friday defended the move as PiS supporters gathered outside the court premises in Warsaw in protest. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"EPA_AutoIngestEPA_AutoIngest<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Bogdan \u015awi\u0119czkowski appeared before reporters near the court’s building <\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by PiS, has now entered the constitutional court, according to his chief of staff. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Nawrocki cancelled a trip to Senegal mid-air in order to attend to the confrontation in Warsaw. He had been on his way to the Summer Youth Olympic Games in Dakar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Riot police were deployed to prevent any demonstrators from entering the court building.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a social media post, the Constitutional Court wrote that the two judges the government wants to prosecute were still the legally appointed senior justices of the court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“All persons participating in these actions are committing the crime of a coup d’etat,” it said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a social media post, Tusk wrote: “Restoring the rule of law is our duty. After years of Law and Justice’s lawlessness, this is a difficult, sometimes painful process that requires decisive action. There is no other way.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The PiS-led government took office in 2015 and moved swiftly to appoint judges to the court to gain a majority there because the court has the power to decide on the legality of legislation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Leading European courts – the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union – subsequently ruled the PiS majority had elected three of the judges improperly because they were duplicating positions that had been validly filled by the previous parliament.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The European courts ruled Poland’s Constitutional Court 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Tusk has failed to undo the PiS-era changes, partially because Nawrocki and his PiS-backed predecessor Andrzej Duda used their presidential vetoes to block his attempts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Nawrocki has also refused to swear in five Constitutional Court judges elected by parliament since March on the grounds of alleged flaws in their selection procedure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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One of those judges, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, has now been placed in temporary charge of the court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"NurPhotoNurPhoto via Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
President Karol Nawrocki (left) and Prime Minister Donald Tusk have been involved in a political tug-of-war over the court<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Earlier this month, the Council of Europe’s advisory body on constitutional matters, the Venice Commission, said Nawrocki should swear-in the judges to allow them to sit on the court’s bench.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Justice Minister \u017burek said \u015awi\u0119czkowski and his vice-president should face criminal charges for not allowing the judges to adjudicate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Some of Tusk’s supporters have accused him of failing to act decisively to reverse the PiS-era reforms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Parliamentary elections are scheduled next year, and some see his move as an attempt to boost Tusk’s popularity among those voters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But his actions have been criticised. In September, Tusk put forward a politician, Maciej Berek, a lawyer who served as a minister in his cabinet, as a judge candidate to the court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lawyer Marcin Matczak, a critic of the PiS-era judicial reform who has stated he considers \u015awi\u0119czkowski to be the court’s worst president, said his suspension had no legal basis “for a million reasons”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Today’s action at the Constitutional Court, in my opinion, buries this body and the issue of the rule of law for two decades,” Prof Matczak wrote on social media. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Images of armed police and legal interpretations according to which the minister of justice can remove the president of the Constitutional Court by decree will have a powerful, anti-rule of law backlash for years to come,” he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/crz9824d5e88o”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/308f\/live\/f44b1080-d50c-11f1-9db5-95ff6e967be3.jpg”] EPA\/Shutterstock Officers were faced down by critics of the move outside the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw Riot police have been deployed at Poland’s Constitutional Court amid an escalating stand-off between the government and the court’s top judges. The row pits the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk against his predecessors from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[35,226],"class_list":["post-2230443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-bbc-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2230443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2230443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2230443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2230443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2230443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}