Riot police were deployed at Poland’s Constitutional Court in the face of an escalating stand-off between the government and the top judges of the court.
The conflict pitches the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk against his predecessors from the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS).
The intervention of the pp police arrived after Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek stated that he had requested stripping the court’s President Bogdan Święczkowski and Vice-President Bartłomiej Sochański of their immunity from prosecution to bring criminal charges against them.
Tusk has sworn to depoliticise the judiciary, and on Friday defended the move as PiS supporters gathered outside the court premises in Warsaw in protest.
President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by PiS, has now entered the constitutional court, according to his chief of staff.
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.
Riot police were deployed to prevent any demonstrators from entering the court building.
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.
“All persons participating in these actions are committing the crime of a coup d’etat,” it said.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
