Poland: President Nawrocki forces his way into the Constitutional Court

Crisis in Poland escalates

President with brutal physical exertion

A judge has suspended the president of the Polish Constitutional Court. Since then, the dispute between the government and the head of state has escalated – on the street and in the courthouse.

Poland’s right-wing conservative President Karol Nawrocki gained access to the sealed-off Constitutional Court on Saturday night Warsaw provided. Television pictures showed him passing through a police line in a crowd.

According to the dpa news agency, the former amateur boxer made his way with brutal physical effort. Nawrocki then called for urgent consultations between all parliamentary parties “to stabilize the political situation and restore constitutional order.”

Behind the escalation is a power struggle over the Constitutional Court that has been simmering for years. The national conservative PiS Poland who ruled from 2015 to 2023, filled it with judges close to her. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has wanted to reverse these appointments since he took office in 2023. But Nawrocki, whose election in 2025 provided significant support for the PiS, refused to take the oath of office to five judges elected by parliament.

The new judges then took their oath before Parliament. Court President Bogdan Święczkowski, appointed during the PiS era, does not recognize them and denied them access to the building. The European Court of Human Rights had already classified the PiS’s appointment practice as unlawful in 2021. In May he decided that the newly elected judges should take up their duties.

The most recent escalation can be traced back to Anna Korwin-Piotrowska. She is one of the five judges that Nawrocki did not want to be sworn in and on Friday suspended court president Święczkowski and his deputy Bartłomiej Sochański for a month. As the longest-serving judge, she took over provisional leadership herself and called a meeting of all constitutional judges on November 3rd. Święczkowski made the court incapable of acting by not admitting the new judges, she explained on TVP.

Święczkowski does not recognize the suspension. The court consists of “lawfully appointed judges, not usurpers who gained entry through the back entrance – accompanied by government security forces,” he said, speaking of a “coup d’état”.

The right-wing conservative camp stood behind Święczkowski. PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński called on Nawrocki to intervene and warned: “From today on, Poland will become a police state.” The president canceled a flight to Senegal on Friday and met with Święczkowski in Warsaw. After his night-time visit to the court, he saw the country’s internal security threatened and, in front of demonstrators, demanded “the withdrawal of the security forces sent by the government from the court premises.”