Poland’s constitutional crisis escalated dramatically on Friday night after the suspension of the country’s top court president drew the president himself back from a foreign trip and onto the streets of Warsaw.
The Constitutional Tribunal said on Friday that its longest-serving judge, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, had suspended the tribunal’s president, Bogdan Swieczkowski, and was now in charge of the court. The notice appeared on the tribunal’s website at around 6 p.m. local time, and the site went down soon afterwards.
President Karol Nawrocki, who was flying to Senegal for an official visit, turned his plane around mid-flight. “At a moment like this, the President must be in Poland. I am cutting short my flight to Senegal. I am returning,” he wrote on X.
Back in Warsaw, police surrounded the Constitutional Tribunal building as supporters of the opposition right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) protested against the suspension. Some demonstrators forced open a metal gate leading to the court’s courtyard, and police said they arrested three people who tried to enter the complex. Some in the crowd chanted “Tusk traitor” against Prime Minister Donald Tusk, while the court’s official X account said there had been a “coup d’etat” and that Swieczkowski remained in office.
Early on Saturday, Nawrocki entered the court building accompanied by the Supreme Court’s First President, Zbigniew Kapinski, his chief of staff Pawel Szefernaker said. Local television footage showed the president pushing his way through the crowds to get inside, after an emergency meeting at the presidential palace.
The standoff is the latest chapter in a long-running dispute over the tribunal, whose judges were largely appointed by the PiS government that ruled from 2015 to 2023. After Tusk’s coalition took office in 2023 pledging to restore the rule of law, it has tried to reform the court, but those efforts have been thwarted by presidents aligned with PiS, including Nawrocki, who was elected in 2025. Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek, who is also attorney general, said he had requested the lifting of the legal immunity of Swieczkowski and his deputy. Tusk defended the action on X, writing: “Restoring the rule of law is our duty. After years of PiS-led lawlessness, this is a difficult process, sometimes painful, and it requires decisive action. There is no other way.”
The image above is illustrative only and is not a photograph of the events described.
Sources: The Times of Israel (https://www.timesofisrael.com/poland-suspends-chief-justice-of-constitutional-court-sparking-protests/amp/) and CNN (https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/31/europe/poland-protests-president-karol-nawrocki-flies-home-hnk-intl?cid=external-feeds_iluminar_meta)
