Poland's conservative president cut short a flight to Senegal and rushed home Friday after the country's pro-European government suspended the chief justice of the country's highest court.
Officers guarded the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw as dozens of demonstrators rallied against the suspension of its leader, Bogdan Święczkowski, according to the Associated Press (AP). Police reported detaining three people after part of the crowd forced through the court's fencing and hurled objects at them.
President Karol Nawrocki, airborne and bound for Senegal, ordered his plane turned around once news of the suspension reached him, the AP reported. "At a moment like this, the President must be in Poland," he wrote on X. (RELATED: Trump Says US Close To Base Expansion Deal With Poland, Potentially Escalating Tensions With Russia)
W takim momencie Prezydent musi być w Polsce. Przerywam lot do Senegalu. Wracam 🇵🇱
— Karol Nawrocki (@NawrockiKn) October 30, 2026
Prime Minister Donald Tusk defended the action as part of his pledge to repair a judiciary he says the opposition corrupted. "Restoring the rule of law is our obligation," Tusk wrote on X on Friday evening, calling the process painful but unavoidable. He has argued that Święczkowski kept judges elected by the governing majority from taking their seats.
Przywracanie rządów prawa jest naszym obowiązkiem. Po latach pisowskiego bezprawia to proces trudny, czasem bolesny i wymaga zdecydowanego działania. Innej drogi nie ma.
— Donald Tusk (@donaldtusk) October 30, 2026
The opposition cast the suspension as an assault on Poland's legal foundations. Zbigniew Ziobro, the former justice minister from the national-conservative Law and Justice party, called it "a blatant, criminal attack on the constitutional order" in a post on X and urged Poles to resist.
Święczkowski, a Law and Justice appointee, has accused Tusk's government of staging a coup, filing a notification that branded senior officials a criminal organization working to rewrite the constitutional system, according to Notes from Poland.
The standoff caps years of conflict over who controls Poland's courts. Tusk's coalition won power in 2023 promising to reverse what the European Union and domestic critics called Law and Justice's capture of the judiciary during its 2015 to 2023 rule, a fight that drew EU fines, the AP reported. Nawrocki narrowly won the presidency in 2025, keeping the office in conservative hands and prolonging the conflict with Tusk's government.
Earlier this year, the governing majority picked six new tribunal judges, Notes from Poland reported. Nawrocki declined to swear in four of them, Święczkowski denied them their seats, and the European Court of Human Rights ordered the court to admit them.
Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek has warned that Nawrocki's defiance could bring the president before the State Tribunal, Polish public radio reported. The court posted the suspension notice around 6:00 p.m. before its website went dark, leaving the official reasons unconfirmed, the AP reported.
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