Waldemar Żurek, the newly appointed justice minister in Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centre-left government, has announced the sacking of 46 heads and deputy heads of common courts, nine officials within his ministry and 44 election commissioners.
The new minister is a former judge who clashed with the opposition PiS over its judicial reforms when last in office. He has replaced Adam Bodnar as part of a government reshuffle announced by Tusk on July 23.
Żurek claimed at a press conference on July 31 that the measures announced were part of the “restoration of the rule of law”. He said they were an answer to demands by Tusk for the acceleration of the “cleaning up” of the justice system after the “mess” allegedly caused by the previous PiS government.
He dismissed 46 heads and deputy heads of courts across Poland and nine officials in his ministry as well as 44 election commissioners of the 100 in total appointed during the lifetime of the PiS government.
Election commissioners are appointed by the State election regulator (PKW) and are responsible for an assigned territory, providing oversight of the work of the 32,000 electoral district committees that run the polling stations and count the votes.
Tusk’s ruling parliamentary majority in 2024 had already elected its sympathisers as members of the board of the PKW.
Both the PM and Żurek’s predecessor Bodnar had in June and July expressed their displeasure at the work of the election regulator (PKW) and the Supreme Court Supervisory Chamber which validated the election result. That was despite alleged irregularities in vote-counting during the spring’s presidential election. That saw the government’s candidate Rafał Trzaskowski losing to the PiS-backed Karol Nawrocki.
Żurek also declared he would not refer to Małgorzata Manowska as the Supreme Court chief justice but as its “acting head”. He said that was because she had been appointed during the lifetime of the last PiS government.
The new justice minister has previously warned that he did not consider those appointed under the PiS administration as being legitimate judges. He has warned them that they were therefore not entitled to or protected by judicial immunity previously enjoyed by all judges and which may only be lifted by their peers in the Supreme Court.
The first visible impact of Żurek’s measures came on July 30,when suspensions began to be delivered to court officials. One of them was Małgorzata Hencel-Święczkowska, the wife of Bogdan Święczkowski, the head of the constitutional court, a body the Tusk government does not recognise as being legitimately constituted.
Święczkowski responded angrily to his wife’s suspension, calling it “an act of revenge” and accused Żurek of politically motivated spite. “No other grounds justify the decision of the minister, who, driven by pettiness, is retaliating to the constitutional court decisions,” he said.
The PiS, during its eight years in office (2015-2023), elected Conservative-leaning judges to the constitutional court (TK), the Supreme Court and the National Council of the judiciary, the body responsible for recommending judicial appointments to the President. It also increased the powers of the justice minister over the common courts.
The reforms were contested in Poland by the then-Liberal opposition and European institutions for weakening judicial independence and the rule of law by bringing the judicial system under greater government control.
The PiS defended the reforms by arguing they were in line with practices in countries such as Germany and Spain, that European Union treaties gave member states the exclusive power to determine their judicial arrangements and that the Polish judicial system had avoided reform after the end of Communism in 1989.
