The drawn-out struggle in Poland as prime minister Donald Tusk’s centrist government tries to undo its predecessor’s legacy of eight years of partisan capture of state institutions has culminated in a dramatic showdown. Since Tusk’s election in 2023, his government has struggled to undo the legacy of the far-right Law and Justice Party (PiS), but run up against repeated vetoes by two successive presidents allied with the opposition.
Tensions came to a head last weekend in a row over appointments to a tribunal which has the power to vet the constitutionality of legislation. PiS supporters scuffled with riot police surrounding the supreme court as president Karol Nawrocki, an opposition supporter, flew back from a foreign mission to confront newly appointed members of the judiciary, citing a threat to the nation’s “internal security”.
One of them, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, had just suspended PiS ally and president of the tribunal, Bogdan Swieczkowski, and his deputy. They had tried to block the appointments by parliament of five new judges to the tribunal in a government bid to unlock the PiS stranglehold on the institution.
The PiS manipulation of the tribunal had been the focus of EU court of justice criticism of Poland’s erosion of rule of law standards, specifically the independence of judges, and had resulted in the freezing of billions of euro of EU funds due to be paid to Poland. In 2021 the tribunal challenged the primacy of EU law in Poland, giving constitutional cover to PiS’s controversial reforms.
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Critics sympathetic to the reform of the institutions, warn, however, that what some see as Tusk’s heavy-handed tactics may only encourage future governments to take their revenge in kind. Nawrocki, meanwhile, appears in no mood to compromise and remains determined to use his limited presidential powers to frustrate and obstruct. Tusk will feel he has little alternative but to push ahead, with a general election due next year. It will be one of a series of divisive polls which will shape EU politics for years to come.
