Polish police have been deployed outside the country’s top court after demonstrators gathered to protest the suspension of its head judge. Police said on Friday they entered the premises of the Constitutional Tribunal after incidents outside the court, including objects being thrown at police. Protesters descended on the Warsaw court after it announced on Friday that its head, Bogdan Swieczkowski, had been suspended.
His suspension is related to a long-running dispute that has effectively paralysed the court. Over the past six months, Swieczkowski used his power as head of the court to block judges elected by the current parliamentary majority from assuming their court duties. Minister of Justice Waldemar Zurek told reporters on Friday that he had requested that Swieczkowski and his deputy’s immunity be lifted for failing to fulfil their duties by preventing judges from performing their work.
Swieczkowski was appointed to his position by Poland’s former nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) government, which critics have accused of politicising the country’s courts. Restoring the rule of law is the government’s duty, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on X following the news of Swieczkowski’s suspension. There is no other way,” said Tusk, leader of the Civic Coalition party.
News of Swieczkowski’s suspension brought crowds of PiS supporters to the gates of the Constitutional Tribunal. Police said they detained three people after some in the crowd launched “dangerous projectiles”. Also on Friday, PiS-allied Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced he was turning his plane around while on the way to a sporting event in Senegal, saying: “At a moment like this, the President must be in Poland”.
Since his election in mid-2025, Nawrocki has refused to swear in three of six judges nominated by the Polish parliament. Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal has long been a point of serious political contention, with critics in Poland and across the European Union accusing PiS, which led the country from 2015 to 2023, of imposing political control over the court by electing judges friendly to the party and its policies. When Poland’s pro-European government came to power, it promised to restore the independence of the judiciary.
However, two attempts to do so have been vetoed by two PiS-aligned presidents – one of them Nawrocki. Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, one of the judges Nawrocki refused to swear in on the grounds of alleged flaws in her selection procedure, has now been placed in charge of the Constitutional Tribunal. Politicians from PiS, currently Poland’s largest opposition force, have criticised Swieczkowski’s suspension.
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