On Thursday, the headquarters of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal resembled a besieged fortress. About a hundred supporters of the conservative opposition blocked access to the building in central Warsaw.
“Poland, wake up,” read one of their banners.
“All patriotic Poles should be here with us,” a woman told the Polish TVN television station.
The protesters were angry about the appointment of Maciej Berek, a new judge to the Constitutional Tribunal. The 54-year-old lawyer and the current Polish government’s Minister for Government Policy Implementation was elected in September by the Seym, the lower house of parliament, in which the center-left has a majority.
On Wednesday, he took his oath as a new judge but afterwards, he was unable to enter the tribunal headquarters and had to turn to the police for help. Scuffles broke out after the barricades were cleared, and he was given access to the building.
But Berek’s problems did not end there. Bogdan Swieczkowski, the president of the Constitutional Tribunal and a close associate of Zbigniew Ziobro, a former minister of justice when the Law and Justice party (PiS) was in power, refused to assign the new judge a position and to allow him to sit on the bench.
Swieczkowski said that Berek could not assume office until Polish President Karol Nawrocki recognized that he had been sworn in. He physically blocked the judge’s path and prevented him from entering another’s office. Berek accused him of violating his physical integrity and filed a criminal complaint.
President Nawrocki obstructing government attempts to restore rule of law
Berek took the oath in the knowledge that he could not count on the president. After being elected last month, he had asked Nawrocki to set a date for the swearing-in ceremony but did not receive a response from the Office of the President. Finally, the governing coalition decided to go ahead with the oath-taking ceremony, which was conducted by the Speaker of the Seym.
To do this, Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government relied on an opinion issued by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, which determined that according to Polish law a judge elected by parliament could be sworn in without the president’s “physical presence” and that this requirement could be bypassed to prevent political gridlock.
Nawrocki’s spokesperson has pointed out that the Venice Commission’s opinion is not legally binding. On Wednesday, the president himself said that he did not recognize Berek’s appointment and told the media that “he is certainly not a judge of the Constitutional Tribunal.”
In the afternoon, he visited Swieczkowski at his official residence. In the evening, it was announced that he had canceled his trip to Slovenia, where he was due to attend a meeting of the non-executive heads of state of European Union members.
Longstanding power struggle over Polish courts
The escalation over Berek’s appointment is merely yet another episode in the longstanding dispute over rule of law in Poland. After the Law and Justice Party (PiS) came to power in 2015, it brought the courts under its political control and described the move as a “judicial reform.” The Constitutional Tribunal was filled with loyal judges.
In 2025, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the Polish Constitutional Tribunal had “violated fundamental principles of EU law and failed to meet the requirements of an independent and impartial court.”
Tusk’s center-left government, which came to power in December 2023, has said that restoring the rule of law is a key aim but it has proven more difficult to depoliticize the courts than expected. There have already been several failed attempts.
In order to reform the Constitutional Tribunal, the government has to wait until the terms of PiS-nominated judges come to an end. Earlier this year, the Seym elected six new judges but Nawrocki refused to swear in four out of six.
Despite not having the support of parliament, he has tried to expand presidential powers since taking office, envisioning a system based on the US model. To overcome his obstruction, the government decided that the four other judges would take their oath in parliament, without him.
However, their work is still being obstructed as the Tribunal president, Swieczkowski, refuses to assign any cases to the new judges.
Tusk hopes to break deadlock
With one year to go before parliamentary elections, Tusk is hoping to break the deadlock. With Berek, the center-left coalition now has eight votes in the 15-member Constitutional Tribunal.
“The Polish state has been functioning for far too long without a properly elected Constitutional Tribunal,” the prime minister said on the platform X on Wednesday. “We will be restoring legal and constitutional order using the methods available to the state.”
According to the daily Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, a two-thirds majority is required in the Constitutional Tribunal to convene a plenary session.
“Eight new judges would have to win over two or three colleagues from the opposing side,” it wrote. “Then it will be possible to lift Swieczkowski’s immunity. Because criminal charges have been filed against him, he could be arrested and, as a result, removed from office.”
Rzeczpospolita, on the other hand, was more skeptical: “Tusk did everything he could to make the mandate, with which Berek was sent to the Constitutional Tribunal, impossible to fulfill,” it wrote, adding that the nomination of an “active minister” and the announcement that he was to implement a political agenda had ruined any chance that he would be viewed as apolitical. “Regardless of the outcome of the dispute, the Constitutional Tribunal will only be recognized by one side of the political spectrum.”
This article was translated from German.
