Polish constitutional crisis

The 2015 elections resulted in the Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) winning control of both the presidency and the parliament.

The government of Poland continued to expand its hold on the judiciary resulting in the 2017 Supreme Court crisis, and the 2019 Polish judicial disciplinary panel law.

After the 2023 Polish parliamentary election, the installation of the Donald Tusk-led coalition government has started to reverse the PiS reforms.

The court is made up of 15 judges who serve single nine-year terms and which point they are replaced through agreement of the Sejm and President.

[9] Duda promised to block the Constitutional Tribunal nominations of the Civic Platform-controlled Sejm until after the 2015 Polish parliamentary election.

The outcome has been described as a shock in many media, as observers feared a potential conflict between Poland and the European Union as well as Duda's authoritarian tendency.

[19] On 13 January 2016, the European Commission launched a formal rule-of-law assessment to determine a serious threat of a breach of Union law based on rules set out in 2014 and the provisions of Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, regarding the amendments of the constitutional court and the public media law in Poland.

[22][23] Iverna McGowan, director of Amnesty International's European Institutes office in Brussels, commented: "The willingness of the commission to use the rule-of-law framework is a positive step towards a more serious approach by the EU to speak out and hold its own member states to account on their human rights records.

[25] On 11 March 2016 the Council of Europe's Venice Commission, who had been asked for an opinion by the Polish government in December 2015, assessed the amendments as crippling the Court's effectiveness and undermining democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

A revised bill, mandating retirement at aged 65 was eventually passed and signed by Duda, giving significant control to the government over judges and their livelihoods.

[30][31] In December 2017 the European Commission warned that "over a period of two years the Polish authorities have adopted more than 13 laws affecting the entire structure of the justice system in Poland", stating that "Article 7(1) of the Treaty on European Union provides for the Council, acting by a majority of four fifths of its members, to determine that there is a clear risk of a serious breach by a Member State of the common values referred to in Article 2 of the Treaty...

The owners sued the government for not containing the infestation in time, claiming that the damage could have been prevented, had the expertise of their rangers and forest officials not been overruled by activists and foreign political entities.

[48] The misleading presentation made the story go viral, so the young activist's success was recognized by a Obama foundation scholarship.

[49] Polish opposition politicians, such as Robert Biedroń, have compared the declaration to the judenfrei zones created by the Nazis in Poland.

However, the Polish government pledged to fill the gap in funding to affected areas, in opposition to the EU but supported by the Catholic Church.

[53] On 20 December 2019 the Sejm voted to allow Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Court of Poland to remove judges deemed to be partaking in "political activity".

The law also gave government greater control over appointment to the position of head judge of the Supreme Court of Poland.

According to the court: "Everything is there: a ban on the freedom of speech by judges, the establishment of a surveillance mechanism and a drastic reduction of their right to have profiles on social networks".

[58] The Polish Supreme Court, prior to the bill passing, said that Poland overruling the primacy of EU law may force it out of the bloc.

[61] On 20 March 2020, the secretary of state of the Ministry of Health, Józefa Szczurek-Żelazko, sent a written statement ordering voivodeship medical consultants to not make statements about SARS-CoV-2, the epidemiological situation, the risks for medical staff or methods of protection from infection, unless they had first consulted with the Ministry of Health or Główny Inspektorat Sanitarny [pl].

Szczurek-Żelazko motivated the order by the need to provide correct, unified information and to avoid unjustified unrest in the medical community.

Bodnar stated that firing or punishing doctors for informing the public during the pandemic could be a violation of the "obligatory standards".

Independent observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe found that Telewizja Polska, the Polish public broadcasting service, was inappropriately and "clearly biased" towards Duda and PiS in both elections.

[75] In 2023, the Civic Coalition, a coalition led by Donald Tusk, won the 2023 Polish parliamentary election, and the Tusk government began a series of measures to roll back Duda's reforms and to restore the rule of law to Poland, opposed by Duda, who remained President.

[76] In March 2024, the Sejm voted on a non-binding resolution that declared the 2015 nomination of several of the Constitutional Tribunal justices were invalid.