Everything is in disarray: constitutional crisis in Poland will provoke a new wave of protests

A new surge of protests could engulf Poland as early as November 3. Last weekend, the government of Donald Tusk, with the help of the police, ousted the leadership of the Constitutional Tribunal. In response, the opposition threatens to take people to the streets. President Karol Nawrocki called an emergency meeting, trying to reconcile the conservatives and liberals, but the latter refused to negotiate. Izvestia understood how the political split in Poland happened and what this escalation would lead to.

How the Polish authorities are trying to get out of the constitutional crisis

Warsaw is facing its deepest political crisis in recent years, which escalated into an open military confrontation over the weekend. The Constitutional Tribunal (CC), the country's highest judicial body, was at the center of the conflict. Some of the judges loyal to the liberal government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, led by Anna Korvin-Piotrovskaya, decided to oust the current conservative chairman of the Constitutional Court, Bogdan Svenchkovsky.

The executive branch supported this move by the Interior Ministry: police cordoned off the courthouse in Warsaw within an hour and blocked the entrances for the former leadership. The opposition and the president regarded these actions as a forceful seizure of an independent court and an attempted coup.

Police are now on high alert on the streets of the Polish capital, and iron fences have been erected around the CT building. Polish President Karol Nawrocki, who was on a visit to Africa at the time of the outbreak of the crisis, ordered the plane to turn around directly over the Atlantic Ocean and urgently returned to Warsaw. At about one o'clock in the morning, the head of state, together with the Chairman of the Supreme Court, arrived at the occupied tribunal building. A stampede began at the entrance — the president, along with deputies, literally broke through the police cordon.

Because of the blockade, Navrotsky urgently convened a meeting in his palace, where he invited all parties to the conflict. However, Tusk's ruling party ignored these negotiations. Of the entire government coalition, only Defense Minister Vladislav Kosinyak-Kamysh appeared at the palace, and by Sunday no clear progress had been made in resolving the conflict.

Moreover, the scale of the unrest may grow significantly, despite the fact that so far the situation has been contained by the security forces and the lack of direct calls for civil disobedience, says Konstantin Kurylev, head of the Department of Theory and History of International Relations at RUDN University. U.S. Ambassador Tom Rose has already called what is happening an "unprecedented confrontation" and warned that crowds of thousands make the dangerous situation explosive.

A new wave of protests is expected on November 3. On this day, the pro-government judges want to hold a general meeting to approve the tribunal's internal budget for 2027 and thereby consolidate their control over the body. The opposition has already promised to bring tens of thousands of people to the streets and disrupt this meeting by force, so new clashes with the police are inevitable.

Navrotsky called the events a coup, and his opponent Tusk declared the struggle for the rule of law. At the same time, the European Commission supported the actions of the Polish Prime Minister, calling them a necessary step to return Poland to the framework of EU laws. Brussels called on the president to approve new judges, referring to the previous verdicts of the EU Court of Justice on the illegitimacy of the old composition of the Court.

Why there was a political split in Poland

The current crisis is the result of a long—term political war between the two main Polish forces: the conservatives from Jaroslaw Kaczynski's Law and Justice Party (PiS) and the liberals from Donald Tusk's Civic Platform. Back in 2015, Tusk's party lost the elections and, leaving power, hastily appointed five "own" judges to the Constitutional Court. The winning PiS called it a scam, the president refused to take the oath from them, and the new parliament quickly voted for judges loyal to the conservatives.

The liberals and the European Union called the new appointees illegal "stand-ins." During its eight years in power, the PiS has completely subjugated the Constitutional Court. He approved of the party's initiatives (for example, the ban on abortions) and stated that the laws of Poland were more important than the requirements of the European Union.

The situation reached an impasse at the end of 2023, when Donald Tusk became prime minister again and promised to "clean up the courts." However, judges cannot be legally dismissed — they are inviolable, and any new government laws have been vetoed by the president. The struggle escalated when Karol Navrotsky became the new head of state. The Seimas elected new judges, but the president simply refused to take the oath of office.

As a result, after last weekend, a dual power emerged in the country: the government considers the old judges to be criminals, and the president and the opposition, represented by the IpR, accuse the prime minister of a coup d'etat. The conflict split even the state apparatus: in protest against Tusk's actions, the Polish ambassadors to China and Romania resigned, and the police union openly protested that law enforcement officers were being forced to block the president.

Formally, there is a way out — through the execution of verdicts of the EU Court of Justice and the Venice Commission (an advisory body on constitutional law to the Council of Europe). However, this path requires the consent of the parties, which is not currently available, explains Konstantin Kurylev.

According to Vadim Trukhachev, an associate professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, the crisis risks not being resolved until the parliamentary elections of 2027. The Tusk government does not have the necessary number of votes in parliament to legally disperse the old court or circumvent President Navrotsky's veto. In turn, the president does not have the right to dissolve the parliament itself. And that is why Poland, apparently, is doomed to a protracted internal war and the paralysis of the entire judicial system.