Poland's conservative opposition said on October 31 it will seek a no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government, escalating a constitutional fight already centred on the country's Constitutional Tribunal. Former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the opposition wants a temporary government led by former parliamentary speaker Marek Jurek, but the move would face a steep parliamentary hurdle.

Under the rules reported by Lusa, a no-confidence motion must be backed by at least 46 deputies to be filed and 231 votes to pass in the 460-seat lower house. The opposition has 212 seats, which leaves it short of the majority needed to bring down the government.

The tribunal dispute at the centre of the crisis

The latest clash began after a notice on the tribunal's website said its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and vice-president, Bartłomiej Sochański, had been removed from their posts and that judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska would take over temporarily. The tribunal rejected that version, saying both men remained in office, accusing the website of being taken over illegally and questioning Korwin-Piotrowska's authority.

Korwin-Piotrowska is one of five judges Nawrocki had refused to swear in. She said Święczkowski had made the court unable to function by blocking the newly nominated judges, and she called all tribunal judges to a meeting on November 3.

The dispute has been building since the years when Law and Justice, or PiS, governed Poland from 2015 to 2023. After Tusk took office in 2023, his government moved to reverse contested judicial changes, while Nawrocki and PiS have resisted parts of that effort.

Police, protesters and Nawrocki's return

Police cordoned off the court in Warsaw as several hundred demonstrators gathered outside. Some tried to force their way past barriers and threw objects at officers, and police detained three people.

Nawrocki cut short a trip to Senegal and returned to Warsaw after learning of the developments. One report said his plane turned back while it was over Spanish airspace. After landing, he met Święczkowski and Zbigniew Kapinski, the first president of the Supreme Court, at the presidential palace in an extraordinary meeting.

Before leaving the tribunal, Nawrocki ordered the police blockade to be lifted and called for consultations with parliamentary leaders to stabilise the situation. In a statement read by presidential spokesman Pavel Szefernaker, Nawrocki said the previous night had brought a violation of constitutional order and a forcible takeover of a state body. He also said he had consulted the Supreme Court president, who did not consider the actions legal.

Accounts of the confrontation at the tribunal entrance differed. Maciej Berek, a newly nominated tribunal judge, said a video showed Nawrocki physically attacking a judge. Nawrocki's team said others obstructed the president, while representatives of the judges said he had physically confronted them. Tusk later criticised the president's entry and the clash with Korwin-Piotrowska.

Tusk says the government is restoring the rule of law

Tusk has defended the intervention as necessary to restore the rule of law, saying the process is difficult and painful but unavoidable. In a national address on Saturday night, he blamed PiS and presidents Andrzej Duda and Karol Nawrocki for what he called the destruction of the rule of law, and said some actors were backed by pro-Russian forces and an army of Russian bots online.

Justice minister and prosecutor general Waldemar Żurek said he had asked for Święczkowski's and Sochański's immunity to be lifted over alleged failures to perform their duties and the blocking of judges chosen by the current parliamentary majority. For now, the tribunal remains split between rival claims, and the political fight has also produced a proposed parliamentary challenge alongside the courtroom dispute.