Monday 2 November 2026
Le Pen calls the tribunal suspensions a forced takeover as Poland's court fight heads into Tuesday's assembly
Marine Le Pen accused the European Union of double standards over Poland's Constitutional Tribunal on Monday, calling the suspension of the tribunal's president and vice president and the police cordon around its Warsaw headquarters a forced takeover of a constitutional body. Seven of the tribunal's long serving judges issued a joint declaration calling the suspension order entirely illegal. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski answered that the government's actions follow democratic norms and Poland's international commitments. The American ambassador to Poland, Tom Rose, called for restraint in what he described as an unprecedented confrontation over the government's use of state power against a constitutional institution. The tribunal's general assembly meets on Tuesday, and whether it reaches a quorum is an open question.
The fight is over who sits on Poland's highest constitutional court and who gets to say so. On Friday, Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska suspended tribunal president Bogdan Swieczkowski and his deputy Bartlomiej Sochanski for a month and said she was taking charge. Riot police set up perimeters around the building, and three people were detained in the demonstrations outside. President Karol Nawrocki flew back from Senegal, entered the tribunal in the middle of the night, told the rival judges they were not judges, and has since announced legal action, arguing among other things that his physical inviolability as president was breached inside the building. Prime Minister Donald Tusk defended the overhaul in a televised address on Saturday night and said that in certain matters there can be no compromise.
Brussels has taken the government's side. Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath said the tribunal must function according to the Polish constitution and European court case law, and affirmed the Sejm's right to appoint judges, the position this site reported on Sunday. That alignment is what Le Pen is attacking. Her argument is that the Union polices judicial independence in member states it dislikes and looks away in Poland because it approves of the government doing the suspending. Slovenia's Prime Minister Janez Jansa made a similar charge about the police deployment. Sikorski's answer, that Warsaw is acting within democratic norms, is the government's whole position stated in one line, and the seven judges' declaration is the other side's: an improper interference in the court's own governance, issued by a judge with no authority to issue it.
Tuesday is the next test. Korwin-Piotrowska has said she will expand the general assembly of judges to include a lottery for disciplinary panels against the two suspended men. Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek says the tribunal should begin hearings within weeks. If the assembly cannot reach a quorum, the government's judges cannot act as a court, and the standoff stays exactly where the weekend left it.
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