Police Deployed at Poland's Constitutional Court Amid Government Stand-off with Top Judges

Riot police have been deployed at Poland's Constitutional Court in Warsaw amid an escalating stand-off between the government and the court's top judges, with officers forming a cordon to prevent demonstrators from entering the building. The intervention came after Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek said he had requested stripping the court's President Bogdan Święczkowski and Vice-President Bartłomiej Sochański of their immunity from prosecution so that criminal charges could be brought against them. The charges relate to their refusal to allow judges elected by parliament since March to adjudicate. Prime Minister Donald Tusk defended the move as supporters of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party gathered outside the court in protest. In a social media post, Tusk wrote that restoring the rule of law was his government's duty, describing it as a difficult and sometimes painful process following what he called years of Law and Justice's lawlessness. "There is no other way," he said. The Constitutional Court responded with a social media post of its own, stating that the two judges targeted for prosecution remained the legally appointed senior justices. "All persons participating in these actions are committing the crime of a coup d'etat," the court wrote. President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by PiS, entered the constitutional court according to his chief of staff. Nawrocki had been flying to Senegal for the Summer Youth Olympic Games in Dakar but cancelled the trip mid-air to return and attend to the confrontation in Warsaw. The dispute has its roots in 2015, when the PiS-led government moved swiftly to appoint judges to the court in order to secure a majority, because the tribunal holds the power to rule on the legality of legislation. The European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union later found that three judges had been elected improperly, duplicating positions validly filled by the previous parliament, and ruled that the court was no longer an independent and impartial tribunal. Tusk's government has used those rulings as the basis to stop publishing the tribunal's rulings. Tusk has struggled to reverse the PiS-era changes, in part because Nawrocki and his PiS-backed predecessor Andrzej Duda used presidential vetoes to block his attempts. Nawrocki has also refused to swear in five Constitutional Court judges elected by parliament since March, citing alleged flaws in their selection procedure. In their place, one of those judges, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, has been placed in temporary charge of the court. Earlier this month, the Council of Europe's Venice Commission, its advisory body on constitutional matters, said Nawrocki should swear in the judges to allow them to sit on the bench. The stand-off drew criticism even from some quarters otherwise sympathetic to reversing the PiS reforms. Marcin Matczak, a lawyer and critic of the PiS-era judicial changes who has described Święczkowski as the court's worst president, said the suspension had no legal basis "for a million reasons". "Today's action at the Constitutional Court, in my opinion, buries this body and the issue of the rule of law for two decades," he wrote, warning that images of armed police and legal interpretations allowing the justice minister to remove the court's president by decree would produce a powerful anti-rule-of-law backlash for years to come. With parliamentary elections scheduled next year, some observers see the move as an attempt to boost Tusk's popularity among voters who have accused him of failing to act decisively against the PiS-era judiciary. Critics have also pointed to his decision in September to put forward Maciej Berek, a lawyer and former minister in his cabinet, as a judge candidate to the court.