Polish President Karol Nawrocki abruptly turned his plane around while traveling to Senegal and headed back to Poland after police entered the country’s Constitutional Tribunal and its president was suspended.
“At such a moment, the President must be in Poland,” Nawrocki wrote on X. “I’m interrupting my flight to Senegal. I’m returning.”
Police said they secured the tribunal after dozens of demonstrators gathered outside to protest what they described as the improper suspension of the court’s president by Poland’s pro-European government.
Authorities also reported that protesters threw dangerous objects at officers outside the building.
Demonstrators gather outside Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw after police restricted access to the building on Oct. 30, 2026 (Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images)
Some demonstrators outside the court prayed, while others displayed signs reading, “Tusk — a symbol of anti-Polish sentiment,” “Down with the commies and Tusk’s regime,” and “Stop destroying the state.”
Poland’s highest judicial institutions, including the Constitutional Tribunal, have become a central battleground between Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-European government and the national-conservative Law and Justice party, or PiS. The party governed Poland from 2015 through 2023.
Critics have accused PiS of exerting political influence over key judicial bodies. Some of the party’s reforms prompted the European Union to impose financial penalties on Poland.
Nawrocki, who is allied with PiS, declined earlier this year to swear in three of the six judges chosen by parliament.
Constitutional Tribunal President Bogdan Święczkowski, appointed under the PiS government after serving as a deputy justice minister, refused to allow judges selected by the current parliamentary majority to take office. The tribunal’s website said Święczkowski was suspended Friday.
Demonstrators rally outside Poland’s highest court as tensions deepen between President Karol Nawrocki and Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government. (AP)
“Restoring the rule of law is our duty,” Tusk said. He returned to power in 2023 promising to rebuild the judiciary’s independence. In a post on X, he wrote, “After years of PiS-led lawlessness, this is a difficult process, sometimes painful, and it requires decisive action. There is no other way.”
Since Tusk’s government took office, its pro-European agenda has faced vetoes from two successive presidents aligned with PiS, including Nawrocki.
Former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, once a PiS member and now a leader of the Rozwój Plus coalition, which is presenting itself as an alternative to Tusk ahead of next November’s parliamentary elections, also criticized what he called “the forceful takeover of the Constitutional Tribunal” in a post on X.
Police officers stand behind a fence bearing a rosary as protesters gather outside Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw after police restricted access to the building on October 30, 2026 (Getty Images)
“Justice cannot be achieved through violence,” Morawiecki wrote, warning that “Tusk will stop at nothing to cling to power… We do not consent to Belarusian methods in Poland!”
“It’s true: a coup d’état is underway,” former PiS Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said on X. “If someone were to forcibly break into the Prime Minister’s Office and take it over, we would all know what to call it… This is a blatant, criminal attack on the constitutional order… That is why I call for resistance that will be loud, firm, solidary and fearless.”
