Polish prime minister proposes talks with the president as the disputed constitutional court meets without its chief justice

After a meeting of the National Security Council on Tuesday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk proposed to President Karol Nawrocki that the two of them sit down this week to discuss the crisis over the Constitutional Tribunal, TVN24 reports. According to Tusk, the aim is to ease tensions and look for ways to shield Poland from further political shocks. On Wednesday he said, according to Wirtualna Polska, that nobody else would be present and that he would reveal nothing more. Reaching consensus will be hard, he admitted, but in his view the point is not for anyone to win or be humiliated.

Presidential spokesman Rafał Leśkiewicz expects a slot to be found quickly, possibly early next week, writes Wirtualna Polska. Nawrocki travelled to Slovakia on Wednesday for a meeting of the presidents of the Visegrád countries. Presidential minister Marcin Przydacz said, according to Euronews, that he hoped the prime minister would not again use police to take over constitutional bodies. In the public part of the security council meeting, Nawrocki placed full responsibility on Tusk and called the government's actions illegal, Notes from Poland reports. Tusk later wrote on X that things were moving in the right direction, which PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński flatly rejected, according to TVN24.

Meanwhile, eight judges, all appointed this year by the parliamentary majority, held a general assembly of the court on Tuesday, broadcast live for the first time. They approved the 2027 budget and drew lots for the panels that will hear disciplinary cases against chief justice Bogdan Święczkowski and his deputy Bartłomiej Sochański, writes Notes from Poland. Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska had declared both suspended on Friday, and police kept them out of the building. Such an assembly normally requires two thirds of the 15 judges. The eight left three colleagues out of the count to reach a quorum, reasoning that constitutional scholar Ryszard Piotrowski calls unlawful.

The government argues that the court has been compromised for a decade by appointments under the former PiS government and blames Nawrocki for refusing to swear in five judges chosen by parliament. Święczkowski and Nawrocki describe the events as a coup. The European Commission said on Saturday that it was following the crisis closely and that the appointment of new judges falls within the Sejm's constitutional powers, Euronews reports.