Tracey Kent

‼️ A COUP IS HAPPENING IN POLAND 🇵🇱 Poland's Constitutional Tribunal is being subjected to an extraordinary takeover operation by pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Its official website has been taken over, an announcement has appeared removing its president and vice-president from their duties, and police have been deployed around the institution. The Tribunal's existing leadership has declared the operation illegal and accused those responsible of committing a coup d'état. The Constitutional Tribunal is the institution responsible for reviewing whether laws comply with the Constitution. It is broadly comparable to the constitutional-review function of the United States Supreme Court. Today, its website announced that President Bogdan Święczkowski and Vice-President Bartłomiej Sochański had been suspended for one month. The person now claiming authority over Poland's Constitutional Tribunal is Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, elected to the Tribunal by Donald Tusk's parliamentary majority in March 2026. But there is a fundamental legal problem: she has never taken her judicial oath before the President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki. Under Article 4 of the Act on the Status of Constitutional Tribunal Judges, newly elected judges must take their oath before the President of the Republic. Nawrocki refused to receive her oath. Instead, on April 9, Korwin-Piotrowska participated in an alternative swearing-in ceremony organised inside the Polish Parliament, without the President's presence or participation. The Presidential Chancellery explicitly declared that this procedure had no legal basis and could not confer judicial authority. The existing leadership of the Constitutional Tribunal maintains that she is therefore not legally a judge of the institution. And now, a woman whose authority to serve as a constitutional judge is rejected by the President and the Tribunal's existing leadership is being presented as the person entitled to take control of the entire court. Poland's Constitution does not give the prime minister or his government the power to dismiss the Constitutional Tribunal's leadership. Article 194 establishes the Tribunal's composition and the procedure for appointing its president. Article 195 guarantees the independence of its judges. The announcement of a suspension relies on Article 130 of the law governing ORDINARY COURTS. Invoking this article to suspend the leadership of the Constitutional Tribunal is a legally indefensible distortion of the law, revealing a staggering disregard for elementary constitutional principles. HOW DID POLAND GET HERE? Donald Tusk returned to power in December 2023, promising to reverse the judicial reforms introduced under the conservative Law and Justice government. Those reforms had been fiercely opposed by the European Commission, which initiated rule-of-law proceedings against Poland and linked access to European funding to judicial conditions. Tusk's government subsequently presented Brussels with a programme for restructuring the judiciary, including the Constitutional Tribunal. The European Commission welcomed that programme and ended its Article 7 proceedings against Poland in 2024. The methods used by the EU and its supporters undermine the very constitutional principles they claim to restore. President Karol Nawrocki has reportedly interrupted his journey to Senegal to return to Poland.