Poland's Tribunal Crisis Deepens as Three Ambassadors Resign, Including the U.N. Envoy, and Tusk Is Accused of a 'Coup'
A Heritage Foundation scholar calls Tusk's move a Soviet-style coup. A Foundation for Defense of Democracies envoy says the court has been compromised for a decade, and Tusk says the president must seat the judges parliament elected.
Poland's fight over its Constitutional Tribunal widened Monday, with a third ambassador resigning in protest and each side accusing the other of breaking the constitution, Fox News reports.
What happened. Friday night, police and protesters gathered outside the tribunal after Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska suspended the court's president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and his deputy. President Karol Nawrocki turned his plane around and cut short a trip to Senegal. Police detained three people after some demonstrators clashed with officers. We covered Friday's events when they happened.
The resignations. Marcin Przydacz, head of the International Policy Bureau in Nawrocki's office, said Poland's U.N. ambassador since 2021, Krzysztof Szczerski, resigned Monday, following the ambassadors to China and Romania over the weekend. Przydacz said "even lawyers who are close to the Tusk government say that there's absolutely no legal basis for such behavior." The resignation count comes from Przydacz.
The critics. Nile Gardner of the Heritage Foundation told Fox "this is clearly a crisis for Poland and an attempted coup by Donald Tusk," and said it has "all the hallmarks of a Soviet-style coup operation," because Tusk waited until Nawrocki was abroad. He argued it destabilizes Poland ahead of next year's election.
The other side. Prime Minister Donald Tusk says he is restoring the rule of law and accuses the president and the tribunal of blocking judges elected by parliament. "The solution to the conflict is simple," he said Monday. "The president recognizes the judges legally elected by [parliament], because that is what the Constitution stipulates." He accused Nawrocki of "choosing forceful confrontation." The University of Ljubljana's Boštjan Udovič says Tusk wants to restore the constitutional order and "hoped the transition would be easier." The European Commission has largely backed parliament's authority to appoint judges.
The middle view. Simone Rodan-Benzaquen of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies says the crisis predates Tusk, with a "deeply compromised" tribunal for more than a decade, but that the legitimacy of restoring it "depends not only on its objectives, but also on the legality of the means used."