Poland's political, constitutional crisis explained: 5 events that led up to coup attempt
Poland's political and constitutional crisis reached accusations of a coup attempt on Friday, when a judge suspended the head of the country's top court, after five events that began with a 2015 fight over judicial appointments and ran through the president's refusal this year to swear in four judges elected by parliament.
Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, the longest-serving judge on the Constitutional Tribunal, suspended court president Bogdan Święczkowski and his deputy, Bartłomiej Sochański, and put herself in charge, The Telegraph reported. The tribunal accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk of staging a coup and posted on social media that "all persons participating in these actions are committing the crime of a coup d'état."
Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek, who is also attorney general, asked for the two judges to lose their legal protection so they could be charged with failing to do their jobs. He said they had stopped judges chosen by today's parliament from working. "This court has become private property; we must restore its proper functioning," he said.
Tusk defended the move on X. "Restoring the rule of law is our duty," he wrote, adding that undoing years of rule by the opposition Law and Justice party, or PiS, was hard, at times painful, and required decisive action.
The tribunal decides if legislation is constitutional, NDTV reported. The fight over who sits on it began in 2015.
1. Rival appointments, 2015
In June 2015, the outgoing coalition changed the law so parliament could fill five seats on the tribunal before the October election, Euronews reported. On Oct. 8, the outgoing parliament elected five judges. President Andrzej Duda would not swear them in.
PiS won the election, and the new parliament threw out those picks and elected five of its own on Dec. 2. Duda swore in the new group.
The tribunal ruled a day later that three of the first five had been lawfully chosen and two had not. It said the president must swear in lawfully elected judges promptly.
Three seats had therefore been filled before PiS made its own picks for them. Those three PiS appointees, Mariusz Muszyński, Henryk Cioch and Lech Morawski, became known as "stand-in judges." The European Court of Human Rights and the top court of the European Union, or EU, later found that the three had been improperly appointed.
2. PiS rewrites the rules, 2016 to 2023
Once in power, PiS changed how the tribunal heard cases, how many judges it needed to rule and the votes required for a decision. In March 2016, the court struck down the initial changes. Prime Minister Beata Szydło's government refused to publish that ruling, saying it had been reached by the wrong procedure.
In December 2016, Julia Przyłębska took over as head of the tribunal, and the three stand-in judges were allowed to sit on cases. Critics said PiS had put the court under political control, and PiS said it was repairing the institution.
The European Court of Human Rights found in 2021 that the tribunal, with Muszyński on the bench, did not meet the test of a court established by law. That same year, the tribunal also issued rulings that challenged the precedence of some EU law on the judiciary.
The court often sided with Polish law over EU law, and it helped impose an almost complete ban on abortion. The EU fined Poland over the PiS reforms.
By 2022 and 2023, judges inside the tribunal were split. Several argued that Przyłębska's six years as president were up, while she said she could stay until her nine-year term as a judge ended.
3. Tusk moves against the reforms, 2024 to 2025
Tusk took office after winning the 2023 election, pledging to undo the PiS changes to the courts. In March 2024, parliament passed a resolution questioning the standing of the three stand-in judges and Przyłębska's right to lead the court.
Two reform bills followed that September, changing how judges were appointed and how the tribunal worked. Duda sent both to the tribunal for review, so neither became law.
Duda named Święczkowski tribunal president in December 2024. Święczkowski once served as national prosecutor and is a close ally of Zbigniew Ziobro, who served as justice minister under PiS.
The government then stopped printing the tribunal's rulings in Poland's official legal gazette, the Journal of Laws. It cited doubts about how the court was composed. The tribunal's leaders called this illegal and said its judgments remained binding.
Last August, Tusk announced a plan to fill the tribunal with lawfully appointed judges. The EU's top court ruled last December that the tribunal fell short of European standards for independent courts.
4. Nawrocki refuses four judges, 2026
In March 2026, parliament elected six judges to fill seats whose terms were expiring. They were Krystian Markiewicz, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, Maciej Taborowski, Magdalena Bentkowska, Marcin Dziurda and Dariusz Szostek.
The new president, Karol Nawrocki, a PiS ally who succeeded Duda, swore in Bentkowska and Szostek and refused the other four. His office pointed to concerns about deadlines and individual votes in the appointment process and said the head of state was not bound to approve every appointee. The government said the constitution gave parliament the power to elect judges, and the president had no right to stop them.
On April 9, the four were sworn in at parliament in front of a notary and forwarded the documents to Nawrocki's office. His office and Święczkowski rejected this, saying an oath counted only in front of the president.
The tribunal's May 12 ruling, numbered K 3/26, said the president could decline appointments and must attend the oath in person. The government challenged the decision, noting that some judges on the panel held disputed seats.
That month, the European Court of Human Rights told Polish authorities in an interim order not to keep the four judges from their posts.
5. Standoff at the tribunal, October 2026
In October, Maciej Berek was sworn in at parliament as well, having received no invitation from Nawrocki. Święczkowski refused to recognize oaths taken without the president and kept some of the newly elected judges from hearing cases.
Korwin-Piotrowska ordered the one-month suspension of Święczkowski and Sochański on Oct. 30, citing rules on temporarily removing judges from duty. She said the step was needed to get the tribunal working and let every judge elected by parliament do the job.
The court's leadership called the order unlawful. It said the law gave no grounds to suspend the tribunal's president, and judges who had not taken the oath before the head of state were not full members.
Scuffles broke out when seven judges entered the building with an escort from the State Protection Service. Nawrocki, who was flying to Senegal, turned back. "At such a moment, the President must be in Poland," he wrote on X, Fox News reported.
On Saturday, Nawrocki went to the tribunal and said he had helped Święczkowski get into the building. An aide read out his statement, which called the events "a forcible takeover of a constitutional body."
Dozens of police guarded the entrance as PiS supporters rallied for the two suspended judges. Some prayed, and others carried signs reading "Stop destroying the state." Police held three people after objects were thrown at officers and some in the crowd tried to force their way past the security fence.
Nawrocki then called party representatives to the presidential palace for talks, citing "the threat to internal security." Tusk's Civic Coalition stayed away. The Left, a member of the governing coalition, said it received no invitation and would have declined one, since it regarded Nawrocki as involved in the conflict.
No breakthrough came by Saturday afternoon. Nawrocki was also due to meet Zbigniew Kapinski, the Supreme Court's first president.
Former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Tusk "will stop at nothing to cling to power" and rejected "Belarusian methods." His Rozwój Plus coalition is pitching itself as a rival to the government before parliamentary elections next November.
Ziobro wrote on X that "a coup d'état is underway" and called for resistance. U.S. Ambassador Tom Rose urged all sides to avoid any step that could provoke violence. "The last thing Poland needs is a confrontation that spirals into something far worse," he said.
