Poland open to EU mediation in Constitutional Tribunal dispute

“We are open to mediation … but it takes two to tango,” Żurek told reporters at the prime minister’s chancellery in Warsaw on 5 November. “You need to have a partner to talk to before you reach consensus,” he added.

The dispute concerns the composition of Poland’s highest court. President Karol Nawrocki, who is rightwing, refused to accept the oaths of judges elected by parliament’s centre-right majority. Senior judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska then assumed leadership of the Constitutional Tribunal, prompting days of protests outside the court by the rightwing opposition party Law and Justice (PiS) and its supporters.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk wants to “stabilise” the situation and will hold talks with Nawrocki, Żurek said, without providing details. Asked whether those talks would produce a breakthrough, the minister said: “We cannot tell the judges that were elected legally [by parliament] to go home.”

Żurek said attempts to politicise the court began in 2015 under the previous PiS-led government, which remained in office until 2023. He called the tribunal “the last fortress” for PiS, saying the party had treated it as “their property.”

The prosecutor’s office was also beginning action against Bogdan Święczkowski, the tribunal’s PiS-aligned official head, who faces embezzlement charges, Żurek said. He added that PiS was “afraid” its members would face the courts. Święczkowski, a former chief prosecutor under PiS’s former justice minister, has also been charged with using spyware to target a solicitor in a politically charged case. The recorded material could include private conversations with Tusk, then the solicitor’s client, or discussions of a legal case against PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński.