Two Senior Justices Suspended at Poland's Top Court as Riot Police Deploy
October 31, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Riot police cordoned Poland's Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw after a disputed judge suspended the court's president and deputy for one month, with the institution calling it a 'coup d'état.' President Nawrocki abandoned his Senegal trip and Poland's ambassador to China resigned.
Three protesters were detained after breaching the tribunal's fence, Warsaw police confirmed, as riot police cordoned Poland's Constitutional Tribunal on Friday night. Inside, a disputed judge had just suspended the court's president and his deputy and declared herself acting head of the institution.
Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska signed orders suspending Tribunal President Bogdan Święczkowski and Vice-President Bartłomiej Sochański for one month, citing obstruction of legally appointed judges. The court's official social media account rejected the move and called it a "coup d'état." Święczkowski is the court president whose appointment Tusk's government has refused to recognise since returning to power in 2023.
President Karol Nawrocki turned his plane around over southern Spain, cutting short an official visit to Senegal, and arrived at the tribunal shortly before 1am on Saturday. Video showed him forcing his way through a police cordon and tussling with security to enter the building. In a statement read at 5am on his behalf outside the court, Nawrocki charged that "a constitutional body was seized by force" and called on security forces to leave.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk rejected that framing. "Restoring the rule of law is our duty," he wrote on X. "After years of PiS-led lawlessness, this is a difficult process, sometimes painful, and it requires decisive action. There is no other way." Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, speaking on the margins of a G20 meeting in Atlanta, told reporters the tribunal "was politicised under the previous government" and that current actions aimed to let "the majority of duly elected judges" make it function again.
The legal ground under both sides is contested. The dispute runs back to 2015, when both the outgoing centrist government and the incoming Law and Justice (PiS) government made legally questionable appointments to the bench in quick succession. Korwin-Piotrowska is one of five judges elected by the current parliament whose oaths of office Nawrocki refused to accept, making her own authority to suspend anyone disputed. Law expert and PiS critic Marcin Matczak said he "did not think he would ever end up defending" Święczkowski, but believed that the legal basis for the suspension was "non-existent."
The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe's advisory body on the rule of law, said in October that Nawrocki's refusal to swear in the five judges "should not prevent them from taking up their positions." Poland's ambassador to China, Jakub Kumoch, resigned the same night, writing that "in light of the events in the country" it was "no longer possible" for him to continue in his role. US Ambassador to Poland Tom Rose called the situation "very serious," adding that "both sides offer sharply different accounts of what happened and why" and warning that thousands gathering outside the tribunal made "an already dangerous situation more combustible."
The EU spent years pressing Warsaw over judicial independence when PiS held power. Brussels argued the court had grown too close to the nationalist government and ruled too readily in favour of Polish legislation over EU law. Now Tusk, who won the 2023 election on a promise to repair those relations, is using methods that even critics of PiS call constitutionally questionable.
Opposition leader Jarosław Kaczyński declared that "from today, Poland becomes a police state." That is political rhetoric. But when a law expert who opposes PiS cannot find the legal basis for the suspension, and Poland's ambassador to Beijing judges the night bad enough to quit over, the rhetoric is not the only problem.
Published October 31, 2026 · Frisian News