The text generally describes the political nature of the conflict correctly, but it should be made more legally precise and analytically stronger. An important clarification: on May 5, the ECtHR did not issue a final “judgment” on the merits of the case, but an interim measure under Rule 39 in Dziurda and Others v. Poland. It concerns four of the six judges elected on March 13 and requires the Polish authorities not to obstruct their assumption of office or the exercise of their judicial functions pending a further decision by the Court. (Hudoc)
Also, on March 13 the Sejm elected six, not four, judges. President Karol Nawrocki administered the oath to only two; the other four became the applicants before the ECtHR. The Sejm elected a seventh new judge on June 11, 2026. In its Rule of Law Report, the European Commission already explicitly links these developments to the broader problem of restoring the independence of the Constitutional Tribunal. (Sejm)
Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal Crisis: From Judicial Reform to Institutional Dual Power
Seven newly elected judges of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal issued a joint statement amid a protracted conflict over allowing four judges elected by the Sejm on March 13, 2026, to take office. They called on the Polish authorities to comply with the interim measure adopted by the European Court of Human Rights on May 5 in Dziurda and Others v. Poland and to remove obstacles preventing the elected judges from exercising their powers. In their view, this could become the first practical step toward ending the Constitutional Tribunal’s years-long crisis and restoring its institutional authority.
The current conflict is a continuation of the constitutional crisis that began under PiS rule, but its logic has changed substantially since the parliamentary majority shifted. Whereas the main issue was previously the subordination of the Constitutional Tribunal to the PiS political majority, the problem now is the absence of a generally accepted mechanism for depoliticizing the Tribunal and restoring its legitimacy.
On March 13, 2026, the Sejm elected six new judges to the Constitutional Tribunal. President Karol Nawrocki administered the oath to only two of them, effectively linking the possibility of filling the vacancies to the period of his presidency. The parliamentary majority, by contrast, insists that the Constitution grants the Sejm the exclusive right to elect Constitutional Tribunal judges, while the president has no authority to review or block the outcome of such an election.
As a result, a dangerous precedent of institutional dual power has emerged: the Sejm considers the four individuals lawfully elected judges, while the presidential side effectively does not recognize their ability to exercise their powers. The dispute therefore no longer concerns only the composition of the Constitutional Tribunal, but also the boundaries of the constitutional powers of the president and parliament.
The ECtHR’s intervention significantly changes the nature of the crisis. On May 5, the Court applied an interim measure concerning Marcin Dziurda, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, Krystian Markiewicz and Maciej Taborowski, requiring the Polish authorities not to obstruct their assumption of office or exercise of judicial functions. Although the measure is not a judgment on the merits and does not definitively determine the legality of either side’s position, it moves the domestic constitutional conflict into the sphere of Poland’s international obligations.
This creates a difficult dilemma for President Nawrocki. Complying with the ECtHR’s requirement would amount to a de facto retreat from his previous position on the four judges. Ignoring the interim measure, in turn, increases the risk of a new conflict between Poland and European legal institutions and allows the president’s opponents to portray his actions not merely as a domestic political dispute, but as a problem of compliance with the state’s international obligations.
The crisis also has a practical dimension. Prolonged obstruction of some appointments reduces the Constitutional Tribunal’s effective personnel capacity, complicates the formation of judicial panels and creates risks for cases requiring a larger quorum. The longer this situation persists, the more the Constitutional Tribunal loses its function as a neutral arbiter between state institutions and becomes one of the objects of their struggle.
The key problem now lies less in the legal status of individual judges than in the absence of a politically acceptable mechanism in Poland for resolving the constitutional crisis that has continued since 2015. The current parliamentary majority is trying to dismantle the model of the Constitutional Tribunal created under PiS, but the president, who is politically close to the right-wing camp, has sufficient institutional tools to block or slow this process.
In the short term, the most likely outcome is a continuation of the conflict among the president, the parliamentary majority and the leadership of the Constitutional Tribunal. None of the sides has sufficient political and legal resources to unilaterally establish a generally accepted model for the Tribunal’s operation.
The main risk, therefore, is not the immediate paralysis of Poland’s constitutional system, but the normalization of parallel interpretations of constitutional legitimacy. If different centers of power systematically recognize only those decisions, judges and procedures that conform to their own interpretation of the Constitution, the Constitutional Tribunal problem could gradually develop into a broader crisis of mutual recognition among state institutions.
In the medium term, this threatens three consequences: a further decline in the authority of the Constitutional Tribunal; the transfer of an increasing number of Polish constitutional disputes to the ECtHR and EU institutions; and the creation of a dangerous precedent in which a change of parliamentary or presidential majority is accompanied by a reassessment of the legitimacy of judicial institutions established by predecessors.
Thus, the statement by the seven newly elected judges is not merely a corporate demand that four colleagues be allowed to work. It is an attempt to establish a compromise starting point for an institutional reset of the Constitutional Tribunal. However, without a political agreement between the parliamentary majority and the president, compliance with the ECtHR’s requirements alone is unlikely to end the crisis: it may resolve the problem of the four judges, but it will not eliminate the fundamental dispute over who should restore the legitimacy of Polish constitutional justice after the PiS-era crisis, and under what rules.
The dispute already effectively concerns whether the president, by refusing to administer the oath, can create his own filter for the exercise of the Sejm’s constitutional right to elect judges. The Sejm itself explicitly states that the president has no competence to assess the correctness of such a choice.
The risk that the dispute over four judges will evolve into a systemic crisis of mutual recognition of powers is real, although as of late August 2026 Poland is not yet experiencing a full-scale constitutional crisis of this kind. The probability of a significant deepening of the crisis over the next 6–12 months is approximately 60–70%, while the probability of complete institutional paralysis is much lower, at around 20–25%.
Why the conflict is already moving beyond a personnel dispute
The key question is no longer who exactly should be a judge of the Constitutional Tribunal, but who has the ultimate authority to determine when a person becomes a fully empowered judge.
The Sejm’s position is quite categorical: Article 194 of the Constitution gives parliament the right to elect judges, while the president’s administration of the oath does not give the head of state the right to reassess the legality of parliament’s choice. The Chancellery of the Sejm explicitly called the refusal to administer the oath to the four elected judges an “usurpation of competence.”
President Karol Nawrocki effectively proceeds from a different interpretation. He administered the oath to only three of the seven judges elected in 2026 and referred a competence dispute to the Constitutional Tribunal itself over whether the president alone holds the exclusive power to administer the oath to a Constitutional Tribunal judge.
The conflict can be reduced to the following formula: Sejm → “we elected the judge” President → “without my action, the judge cannot exercise judicial powers” Constitutional Tribunal → must resolve a dispute that directly concerns its own composition.
This is precisely where the risk of a closed constitutional loop arises.
The most dangerous scenario is not paralysis, but two legal realities
A systemic crisis will not begin when the Constitutional Tribunal simply becomes unable to assemble a quorum. A far more serious indicator will be a situation in which different state institutions cease to recognize the legal consequences of one another’s decisions.
For example, the Sejm may consider the four individuals lawfully elected judges; the president may refuse to recognize completion of the procedure by which they assume office; the Constitutional Tribunal itself may rule in favor of the presidential interpretation; and the parliamentary majority may challenge the legitimacy of that ruling because of the composition of the Tribunal itself.
At that point, there is no longer a single conflict but a chain: appointment crisis → crisis over the composition of the Constitutional Tribunal → crisis over the legitimacy of its rulings → non-recognition of those rulings by other institutions → competition among constitutional legitimacies.
The prerequisites for this mechanism already exist. The Sejm itself has previously stated that the Constitutional Tribunal no longer meets the standards of an independent and impartial court, citing, among other things, rulings by Polish and European courts.
The ECtHR creates an additional layer of conflict
The ECtHR’s interim measures in Dziurda and Others v. Poland sharply raised the stakes. The Court required the Polish authorities not to obstruct the four applicants from assuming office and exercising judicial functions pending a further decision.
There are therefore now effectively three sources of legal interpretation:
| Center | Basic position |
| Sejm | The judges were lawfully elected; the president cannot block the choice |
| President | The presidential oath-taking procedure has independent constitutional significance |
| ECtHR | The Polish state must not prevent the four judges from exercising their functions |
In its Rule of Law Report 2026, the European Commission separately recorded both the parliamentary election of seven judges and the ECtHR interim measure concerning four of them. The problem has therefore ceased to be an exclusively domestic Polish dispute.
The August 30 statement by the seven new judges is particularly telling: they not only supported their four colleagues, but appealed to all authorities of the Republic of Poland to comply with the ECtHR decision and called this the first step toward ending the Constitutional Tribunal crisis.
Three possible trajectories
Managed confrontation – ~55%. The most likely scenario. The president and parliament continue their legal struggle but avoid extending the principle of non-recognition to other state institutions. The terms of judges associated with the previous Constitutional Tribunal crisis are gradually expiring — importantly, two relevant mandates end in September 2026 and January 2027. This creates a natural “exit window” from part of the conflict.
Crisis of mutual recognition -~30%. The president does not comply with the requirement concerning the four judges; the Constitutional Tribunal supports the presidential interpretation; the government or parliament challenges the legal force of such a ruling. The dispute then expands to the question of which laws, Constitutional Tribunal rulings and presidential actions are binding. This can already be characterized as a fragmentation of constitutional legitimacy.
Deep constitutional crisis- ~15%. The worst-case scenario would see the conflict spread beyond the Constitutional Tribunal: mutual non-recognition by the president and government of certain appointments, laws or court rulings; disputes over the publication and enforcement of decisions; and parallel interpretations of the powers of state institutions. The Constitution would formally remain one and the same, but there would be no generally recognized arbiter capable of establishing its final interpretation.
If the answer becomes affirmative, Poland will cross a qualitative threshold.
The conflict would then cease to be a crisis within the Constitutional Tribunal and become a crisis of constitutional authority.
What could become the trigger
The most dangerous trigger would not be the case of the four judges itself, but a politically critical Constitutional Tribunal ruling directly affecting the government or parliamentary majority — for example, on a key law, presidential powers, judicial reform or budgetary decisions.
If the Constitutional Tribunal declares such a law unconstitutional and the government responds that the ruling has no legal force because the Tribunal was improperly constituted, a classic situation emerges: “who has the authority to determine who has the authority to determine.”
This is why the current competence dispute initiated by Nawrocki is potentially more important than the fate of the four individual judges. The president is effectively asking the Constitutional Tribunal to establish the boundaries of presidential and parliamentary competence in circumstances where the legitimacy of the Tribunal’s own composition is itself in dispute.Key judgment: Poland’s crisis remains manageable, but its structure already contains a self-reinforcing mechanism. The greatest danger is not that the Constitutional Tribunal will cease to function, but that Poland may lose a generally recognized domestic mechanism for the final resolution of disputes among the president, parliament and the judiciary. In that case, each center of power would begin deriving its own legitimacy directly from the Constitution while simultaneously denying another center the right to provide its final interpretation. This would mark a transition from a crisis of the Constitutional Tribunal to a crisis of constitutional arbitration within the Polish state.
