Police guard Poland’s top court after its president is suspended

Riot police guarded Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw on Friday as protesters challenged the suspension of its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, in an escalating struggle over control of the country’s top court.

The suspension follows a request by Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek to lift the immunity of Święczkowski and the court’s vice-president, Bartłomiej Sochański, so they can face criminal charges. Żurek said the two had prevented newly elected judges from carrying out their duties. Al Jazeera reported that Święczkowski had used his authority over the past six months to block judges chosen by the current parliamentary majority from taking up their work.

Supporters of the opposition Law and Justice party, or PiS, gathered outside the court. Police were deployed to keep demonstrators from entering the building. Officers said they entered the premises after objects were thrown at police and detained three people after some protesters launched what they called “dangerous projectiles,” according to Al Jazeera.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk defended the action as part of his government’s effort to reverse changes made to the judiciary under PiS, which governed Poland from 2015 to 2023. “Restoring the rule of law is our duty,” he wrote on social media. “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 court rejected the move. In a social media post, it said Święczkowski and Sochański remained its legally appointed senior justices and declared: “All persons participating in these actions are committing the crime of a coup d’etat.” Former PiS Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro called the suspension “a blatant, criminal attack on the constitutional order.”

The dispute dates to PiS’s appointment of judges to the tribunal after it took power. The European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union subsequently ruled that three judges had been improperly elected to seats already validly filled by the previous parliament, according to the BBC. The courts concluded that the tribunal was no longer an “independent and impartial tribunal.” Tusk’s government has cited those rulings in declining to publish its decisions.

Tusk’s attempts to undo the PiS-era changes have faced presidential vetoes. President Karol Nawrocki, a PiS ally, has also refused to swear in some judges elected by parliament, citing alleged flaws in their selection. The BBC reported that he had refused to swear in five judges elected since March; Al Jazeera said he had refused to swear in three of six nominees since his election in mid-2025. Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, one of the affected judges, has been placed temporarily in charge of the court. The BBC reported that the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission said earlier this month that Nawrocki should swear in the judges.

Nawrocki turned his plane back toward Warsaw while travelling to a sporting event in Senegal. “At a moment like this, the President must be in Poland,” he said, according to Al Jazeera.

The government’s approach has also drawn criticism from an opponent of PiS’s judicial changes. Lawyer Marcin Matczak said Święczkowski’s suspension had no legal basis “for a million reasons” and warned that images of armed police at the court would provoke an “anti-rule of law backlash for years to come,” the BBC reported.