Poland's president, Karol Nawrocki, walked into the Constitutional Tribunal building in Warsaw shortly after midnight, after turning his plane around mid-flight to Senegal, in an overnight confrontation over who controls the country's top court. On Friday, Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska had suspended the Tribunal's president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and his deputy, Bartłomiej Sochański, for a month, police had secured the building, and Nawrocki flew home, held an emergency meeting at the Presidential Palace, and drove to the court.
The entry turned physical. The president's spokesman said Judges Korwin-Piotrowska and Krystian Markiewicz tried to manhandle the president as he entered with the Supreme Court's First President, Zbigniew Kapiński — an attack, his office says, on the head of state's inviolability. Judge Maciej Berek, who posted video of the doorway scene, gives the opposite account: he says it was Nawrocki who physically attacked the judges and chose the path of confrontation. Both claims are on the record; the videos show a crush of bodies in the doorway and do not by themselves settle who used force first.
Inside, Nawrocki faced Korwin-Piotrowska — who says she now leads the Tribunal — and the judges the Sejm had sworn in, and told them: "You are not judges of the Constitutional Tribunal." A photograph published later by a presidential aide showed him inside the building with Kapiński, his chancellery chief Zbigniew Bogucki, National Security Bureau head Bartosz Grodecki and the suspended deputy Sochański. In his statement, the president called the night a violation of the constitutional order and a forcible takeover of a constitutional body, said he had enabled the legally serving vice-president to enter the Tribunal, and called urgent consultations with the parliamentary forces for Saturday to restore order. Prime Minister Donald Tusk answered that his government is obliged to restore the rule of law after what he called years of lawlessness. Poland's ambassadors to China and to Romania resigned over the events, several hundred protesters gathered outside the court — some breaching its fence — and three people were detained.
The United States ambassador, Tom Rose, intervened publicly during the night, calling the events "very serious" and an unprecedented confrontation over state power and the independence of a constitutional institution. He noted that both sides give sharply different accounts, urged officials, police and demonstrators alike to take a deep breath and avoid anything that could provoke violence, and said America is on Poland's side but will not interfere — Poland's strength, he said, must come from within.
From New York, Polish MEP Dominik Tarczyński posted a video message accusing Tusk's government of trying to seize the Tribunal as part of a wider project that he says includes replacing the złoty with the euro, moving Poland's gold reserves to Frankfurt and opening the country's borders — and urged Poles to "be like Poland" and fight. Those are his claims, and they are the argument Nawrocki's camp is making to the country: that the suspension was not an internal court matter but an attempted takeover of a constitutional body by the government.
For ordinary Poles, the fight is over who has the final word on what the law is — the Tribunal rules on the laws that govern daily life — and for Poland's allies it is a frontline NATO state whose institutions spent a night in open conflict, with Washington's ambassador publicly urging calm. Saturday's consultations are the next test of whether the two camps can step back from the doorway.
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