Nawrocki’s refusal to swear in judges
Police have been deployed in a stand-off over control of Poland’s top court. President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by PiS, ordered his plane to be turned back to Warsaw while he was traveling to Senegal to attend the Summer Youth Olympic Games. He refuses to swear in five Constitutional Tribunal judges that parliament has elected since March because of alleged flaws in their selection procedure. I find his refusal to swear in these judges to be a blatant attempt to obstruct the current administration. Tusk vowed to depoliticise the judiciary after taking office in 2023, but Nawrocki and his PiS-backed predecessor Andrzej Duda used presidential vetoes to block his attempts to undo the changes made during the PiS era. In a social media post, Tusk wrote: "Restoring the rule of law is our duty. 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 tribunal’s disputed legitimacy
The Constitutional Tribunal sparked the long-running rule of law dispute when the PiS-led government took office in 2015. The PiS majority in parliament moved to appoint judges to the court to gain a majority there because the court has the power to decide on the legality of legislation in the country. The European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union subsequently ruled that the PiS majority improperly elected three of the judges because those appointments were duplicating positions that had been validly filled by the previous parliament. I find the current standoff over control of the court to be a direct result of the PiS majority’s efforts to appoint judges to gain a majority. Because the European courts ruled the tribunal is no longer an "independent and impartial tribunal", Tusk’s government uses those rulings as a basis to stop publishing the tribunal’s rulings. I find the entire situation involving the tribunal’s legitimacy to be a complete mess. The tension between the presidency and the government remains high.
