A mid-flight presidential U-turn

We like to think Poland's semi-ceremonial president (Nawrocki) was about to crack open a fresh ginger ale and recline into a big House of Cards rewatch when — somewhere off Spain's south coast en route to Senegal — he suddenly told the pilot to turn the presidential jet around and race home!

Did Nawrocki leave the stove on? Forgot to feed the cat?

It’s worth joining us on what is one heck of a journey, starting way back with his rival and Poland's centrist prime minister...

• 👔 Donald Tusk

Back when PM Tusk’s centrists last lost power in 2015, his outgoing coalition tried to appoint five top judges just before the buzzer, but two of the spots weren't even vacant.

So the incoming populists declared it all illegal court-packing then parachuted their own loyalists into the constitutional court, even ousting Tusk's three legit new judges!

So right there, you can see ✌️both sides✌️ have dirty hands:

• Tusk probably shouldn't have tried to prematurely replace any judges, and

• The populists probably shouldn't have ousted Tusk's other legit new judges.

But eventually the populists wrested full control and turned Poland's constitutional court from a check into more of an enabler. And don't take our word for it:

• Helsinki researchers found 176 cases of the court's loyalist chief shuffling judges around in ways suspiciously helpful to the populist government, while

• Two top European courts were scathing, ruling Poland's court didn't even meet the definition of a "tribunal established by law"!

Anyway, the Polish people eventually voted for a 2023 switcheroo, ousting the populists and putting Tusk's centrists back in power. And yet, for their new semi-ceremonial president in 2025, they also elected a familiar populist called...

• 🥊 Karol Nawrocki

That's the guy who just ordered his presidential jet to pull a U-turn.

And since arriving as president last year, he's refused to swear in most of Tusk's judicial nominees! Sure, he's always got a reason (procedural, partisan, or professional inadequacies), but his dock-blocking has caused two things:

• first, a big debate whether Poland's president gets this kind of discretion to just casually pick and choose which parliamentary-appointed judges he'll allow (fwiw, the court and Europe's independent Venice Commission say it's just ribbon-cutting that each president must complete "without delay"), and...

• second, by ignoring the court and commission, Nawrocki has now sparked complete gridlock in Poland's constitutional court, which has lost quorum to hear cases, plus even got its budget slashed by a parliament outraged at all this blocking.

So that brings us to 6pm on Friday night, when seven justices entered the court building, took over its official website, and issued a spicy statement suspending the chief justice over his complicity with Nawrocki's dock-blocking!

Under what authority? The group’s leader invoked her seniority (by years of service) and a doctrine of "a state of higher constitutional necessity" (ie, desperate times call for constitutionally-desperate measures).

So that's when Poland’s angry president reversed course and, eight hours later, joined opposition protestors outside the court labelling it all a coup! Meanwhile, Tusk insists he’s simply "restoring the rule of law [...] after years of lawlessness".

And that’s why Poland's constitutional court is right now still split between two rival factions, surrounded by riot police and protestors, while a welcoming committee in Senegal is forlornly rolling up all the Polish flags it probably bought off Temu.

Sound even smarter:

• Four former chief justices of Poland’s constitutional court have come out in support of the judges who made Friday night’s big move.

• France’s right-populist Marine Le Pen has come out the other way (sparking a rebuke from Poland’s foreign minister).

• Keep an eye also on the tensions brewing between Poland’s Tusk government, and the central bank governor aligned with the populists.