Poland's National Prosecutor investigates Constitutional Tribunal

The National Prosecutor's Office has launched an investigation into the Polish Constitutional Tribunal regarding the unlawful appointment and alteration of judicial panels. The probe, initiated following a notification from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, focuses on potential abuses of power by public officials between 2016 and 2024.

Investigators are examining whether judges bypassed statutory rules to change the personal composition or size of panels—such as reducing full benches to three or five members—to achieve personal benefits or serve the interests of the parliamentary majority. The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights reported identifying at least 176 cases between 2015 and 2020 where panel compositions were allegedly changed arbitrarily, describing it as a ‘systemic mechanism’ of manual control over the Tribunal.

Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek stated that the prosecution intends to ‘account for every decision destroying the independence of state institutions.’ The investigation aims to determine if these actions resulted in the Tribunal losing its ability to function as an independent and impartial body of constitutional control.