How Poland’s Judges Have Closed Nawrocki’s Road to Snap Elections

The pathway to snap elections in Poland closed on the night of 30 October. Judges began repairing the Constitutional Tribunal on their own authority, and once the court works again, President Karol Nawrocki loses the one lever that could have dissolved parliament early. The repair is contested and messy, but it is likely to hold.

Late on Friday 30 October, as Poles prepared for All Saints’ Day, the presidential aircraft turned round over Spain. Karol Nawrocki had been on his way to Senegal. He posted that he was breaking off the flight and coming back, and shortly before one in the morning he was crossing the barriers and a line of judges at the Tribunal’s doors with brute force of his torso and hands in order to breach into the building. The recording shows the scene when he told Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, Krystian Markiewicz and Maciej Berek that they were not judges of the Tribunal.

Hours earlier the Tribunal’s website had announced a one-month break in the duties of its president Bogdan Święczkowski, and his deputy Bartłomiej Sochański. The order came from Korwin-Piotrowska, who took charge as the judge with the longest judicial service. She is now convening a General Assembly of judges for Tuesday 3 November, among other things, to adopt the Tribunal’s 2027 budget.