Żurek Says Constitutional Tribunal Can Take Up Święczkowski, Sochański Immunities Without Quorum

A quorum of the Constitutional Tribunal’s General Assembly is not needed to lift the immunities of Bogdan Święczkowski and Bartłomiej Sochański, Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek told the daily “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.”

Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska has convened the General Assembly of the Constitutional Tribunal (TK) for Tuesday. Among other things, it is to deal with the Tribunal’s budget for 2027. The TK has also received five motions from the prosecutor general to lift the immunities of both Bogdan Święczkowski and Bartłomiej Sochański, the newspaper notes in its Tuesday edition.

“I wouldn’t prejudge today how the quorum should be counted. That is a decision for the Tribunal’s judges. In the case of immunities, the regulations have been analyzed many times – a quorum is not necessary in this case. For the budget – yes,” the justice minister said.

“DGP” points out that Zbigniew Kapiński, First President of the Supreme Court, questions the legality of convening the TK’s General Assembly. In his view, Judge Korwin-Piotrowska had no right to take over leadership of the TK or to convene the assembly.

Minister Żurek defends the legal basis for those decisions. “Although the provisions underlying the order of a break in official duties are not set out explicitly in the law governing the Tribunal’s functioning, in a situation where its leadership is acting contrary to the law, other regulations can be applied accordingly. The rule is that if a linguistic interpretation does not provide an answer, we turn to other methods of interpretation,” he says. According to him, Korwin-Piotrowska correctly derived the basis from the law on the TK, the law on the Supreme Court and the provisions on the organization of the common courts.

The head of the Ministry of Justice stresses that the decision to sideline Święczkowski and Sochański was made within the Tribunal, not by the government. He considers that line to be key from the standpoint of the separation of powers. “As justice minister, I certainly cannot suspend either the president or the vice president of the Tribunal. That would be excessive interference by the executive branch,” he says. (PAP)