Third Polish ambassador steps down as Sikorski accuses Nawrocki of pressing envoys to quit

Poland's ambassador to the United Nations asked on Monday to leave his post early. He is the third Polish envoy to step down since Friday night, when judges elected by the current parliament moved to take control of the Constitutional Tribunal. Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said President Karol Nawrocki had personally pressed ambassadors to resign. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the dispute could end quickly if the president recognized the judges parliament had chosen. The president's office said the first move must come from Tusk.

The exchanges came a day before a meeting that could test who controls the court. Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, who says she is now running the tribunal, has called a general assembly of its judges for Tuesday. It is not clear that enough judges will attend for the meeting to count.

This story follows our earlier reports on the Friday suspension of the tribunal's president and the European Commission's view that Poland's parliament can appoint the court's judges. It covers what changed on Monday, November 2.

Three ambassadors leave

Foreign ministry spokesman Maciej Wewiór announced the latest departure on X. "Ambassador Krzysztof Szczerski approached the minister of foreign affairs with a request to cut short his diplomatic mission to the UN. Minister Sikorski granted this request," he wrote, according to the Polish Press Agency (PAP). Szczerski will leave New York later this month.

Szczerski has led Poland's UN mission since 2021. Before that he ran international policy in the office of former President Andrzej Duda, PAP reported. Notes from Poland reported that he had earlier been a member of the European Parliament for the Law and Justice party (PiS), which governed Poland from 2015 to 2023.

Two other envoys had already quit. Jakub Kumoch, the ambassador to China, resigned on Friday. Paweł Soloch, the ambassador to Romania, resigned on Saturday. Both linked their decisions to the events at the tribunal. Soloch wrote that the "attempt to unlawfully take over the Constitutional Tribunal" left him with "no possibility of continuing to serve as ambassador," Notes from Poland reported. Kumoch called his decision "a matter of conscience." He said "there are certain things I cannot explain abroad without losing face, and I have no intention of speaking ill of Poland."

Szczerski has not explained his reasons in public, according to Notes from Poland. Marcin Przydacz, who heads the International Policy Bureau in the president's office, drew his own conclusion. "Following the Polish ambassadors to China and Romania, this is now the third high-ranking diplomat who refuses to lend his name to the lawlessness of Donald Tusk's government. The context is obvious," he wrote on X, PAP reported.

All three men worked closely with Duda, who is aligned with PiS. Kumoch sat on Duda's National Development Council. Soloch headed Duda's National Security Bureau from 2015 to 2022, Notes from Poland reported.

Sikorski blames the president

Sikorski spoke to reporters in parliament on Monday. He said he first "thought the president's staff had been urging ambassadors to resign," but it later "turned out that the president himself was doing it," Polish Radio's English service reported. "That is not the president's role, forcing Polish ambassadors to resign," he said. He added that pressure was also "being exerted" on candidates for future ambassador posts.

Sikorski argued that Poland's constitution gives the president a mostly ceremonial role. "The president can, at his own discretion, give someone a state decoration, grant someone Polish citizenship or pardon someone, but he cannot choose judges and he cannot choose ambassadors," he said. He also said: "The president in Poland is not the Sun King. He has powers defined by the constitution."

He rejected calls for a fresh start on the court. "No reset is needed," he said. Sikorski accused Nawrocki of trying to turn Poland into a "presidential republic" without changing the constitution, by refusing to swear in judges and by what Sikorski called physical pressure.

The foreign minister also criticized the president's Saturday talks with party leaders. Those talks included Grzegorz Braun, a far-right member of the European Parliament who leads the Confederation of the Polish Crown. Polish Radio reported that Braun's immunity has been lifted so that he can face several charges. Sikorski said he was "very surprised that Mr. President has gone so far."

Nawrocki's office has not publicly answered Sikorski's claim about the ambassadors, as far as the reports we reviewed show. We will add its response if it gives one.

Tusk: "Resolving the conflict is simple"

Tusk set out his terms in a post on X on Monday. "Resolving the conflict is straightforward and can be done without amending the Constitution," he wrote, PAP reported. "The President recognizes the judges lawfully appointed by the Sejm, as required by the Constitution, and they take up their duties at the Tribunal." The Sejm is the lower house of parliament.

He accused Nawrocki of "opting for a forceful confrontation, which could cost Poland dearly." PAP said Tusk also wrote that a democratic state cannot give way to violence. Tusk linked the unrest at the court to PiS, the right-wing Confederation party, Braun and the president.

On Saturday, Tusk had told the nation in a televised address that on some issues "there can be no compromise," Notes from Poland reported. Euronews reported Monday's post as a call for the president to confirm the judges.

Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek dismissed the right's defense of the constitution. "It's the old 'catch the thief!' trick," he told Politico Europe's Brussels Playbook. He accused Nawrocki of walking into the tribunal as if it were his own palace.

The president's office: "The president cannot solve this problem on his own"

Nawrocki's aides say the government created the crisis and must fix it. Presidential spokesman Rafał Leśkiewicz told the private broadcaster Polsat News that there are several ways to handle the dispute. "But a concrete initiative must come from the man who ruined it all. That is to say, from Prime Minister Donald Tusk, from the government and from the Polish parliament," he said, PAP reported. "After all, the president cannot solve this problem on his own."

Przydacz made the president's case to a European audience on Monday morning. He told Euronews there was "absolutely no legal basis for such behavior." He said judges on the tribunal "should be legitimate legal judges, not Tusk's judges." He said there was "a need for any kind of a restart."

Zbigniew Bogucki, who heads the president's office, wrote on X that Tusk had crossed "all boundaries." He called the police presence on the court grounds and "the actions taken there" unlawful, Polish Radio reported.

After leaving the court early on Saturday, Nawrocki declared the situation a breach of the constitutional order and called urgent talks among party leaders, PAP reported. Sikorski's Civic Coalition did not take part in those talks, Polish Radio reported.

How the court got here

The fight over the tribunal began long before Friday. In 2015, Duda and the new PiS government refused to accept three judges chosen by the previous parliament and installed three of their own. Notes from Poland describes that step as unlawful. Tusk's coalition took power in December 2023. It does not recognize the tribunal as lawfully composed and has ignored its rulings since then.

This year, the coalition began filling the court's vacancies. Parliament elected eight judges. Nawrocki has refused to swear in five of them, Notes from Poland reported. The government has condemned both Nawrocki and the tribunal's then-president, Bogdan Święczkowski, for refusing to accept those judges.

On Friday, October 30, the eight new judges entered the court building. Korwin-Piotrowska, one of them, announced that Święczkowski and Vice President Bartłomiej Sochański were suspended for one month and that she had taken charge. Riot police surrounded the building. Święczkowski called the move unlawful and an attempted "coup d'état," Notes from Poland reported. The six other judges appointed under PiS back him.

Nawrocki turned his plane around on the way to Senegal and went to the court after midnight. Politico Europe reported that he pushed past Korwin-Piotrowska and other judges at the entrance and told them: "You are not real judges."

The court has 15 seats. The split below is based on the reporting we reviewed. It counts the judges by which parliament chose them, not by whether each side accepts them.

0

2

4

6

8

Elected by current parliament (2026)8

Appointed while PiS held a majority7

Elected by current parliament (2026)Appointed while PiS held a majority

Source: Notes from Poland

Show the numbers

Group	Judges
Elected by current parliament (2026)	8
Appointed while PiS held a majority	7

What happens on Tuesday

Korwin-Piotrowska has called a general assembly of the tribunal for Tuesday afternoon. Politico Europe reported that she wants to unite the court's divided membership and start disciplinary proceedings against the suspended leaders. A valid assembly normally needs 10 judges, Notes from Poland reported. The eight newer judges are expected to attend. The judges appointed under PiS appear unlikely to do so. That would leave the meeting two short of the usual quorum. Polish Radio reported that the assembly is expected to approve the court's 2027 budget. Korwin-Piotrowska has also said she will add a random draw to pick the panels that would hear the disciplinary cases against Święczkowski and Sochański.

The president's side does not accept the new leadership. Święczkowski and the six other PiS-era judges say he remains the court's lawful president.

Judges of the Supreme Court are also due to meet on Tuesday, as our earlier report on the Commission's position noted.

The view from abroad

The dispute has drawn comment from outside Poland. European Commissioner Michael McGrath has said that choosing new judges lies within the powers of Poland's parliament, Fox News reported.

Tom Rose, the U.S. ambassador to Poland, urged restraint. "America is on Poland's side," he wrote on X, according to Fox News. "Poland has come too far and accomplished too much to let political differences, no matter how strongly felt, put any of that at risk."

French opposition leader Marine Le Pen criticized Brussels. She wrote on X that the suspension and the use of security forces appeared to resemble a forced takeover of a constitutional body, Euronews reported. She also complained about "the indifference of the European Union." Sikorski answered her directly. "Ms Le Pen, as a friend and ally of France, Poland does not interfere in your politics. We ask you to respect us by not interfering in ours," he wrote. Le Pen is herself waiting on a court ruling on whether she can run for office in France.

Outside analysts disagree about how to read the events. Simone Rodan-Benzaquen of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank, told Fox News that Poland "has been living with a deeply compromised Constitutional Tribunal for more than a decade." She said the methods used on Friday "raise serious questions about the legality and proportionality." Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation, another Washington think tank, called the events "an attempted coup by Donald Tusk." Boštjan Udovič, a professor at the University of Ljubljana, rejected that description. "Tusk wants to restore the situation as required by the constitution and the international institutions," he told Fox News.

Notes from Poland reported that a number of legal experts who strongly criticized PiS's handling of the courts have also doubted how the new judges took control.

The politics behind it

Poland holds a parliamentary election next year. Politico Europe reported that the crisis is drawing the divided right closer together. PiS co-founder Jarosław Kaczyński and Braun both joined the protest outside the court. "There are plenty of differences between our programs. But ending Prime Minister Tusk's government is the fundamental common goal," Anna Bryłka, a vice president of the Confederation party, told Politico.

Kaczyński recently floated talks on leaving the European Union as a pressure tactic.

Politico also noted that the crisis could remind voters who backed Tusk in 2023 why they did so, since restoring the rule of law was one of his central promises.

What we could not confirm

We could not confirm whether Nawrocki spoke to any of the three ambassadors before they resigned. That claim comes from Sikorski. Przydacz, in the president's office, has presented the resignations as a protest against the government. We also could not confirm how many judges will attend Tuesday's assembly until it takes place.

This story relies on official statements and on reporting by PAP, Polish Radio, Notes from Poland, Politico Europe, Euronews and Fox News. Quotes from posts on X are taken from those reports. Read how we handle sources in our methodology.

Differing perspectives

How should Poland resolve the dispute over who lawfully sits on and leads its Constitutional Tribunal?

Each position is summarized as its supporters make it, with equal weight and in alphabetical order. A summary is not an endorsement; the evidence for each is weighed in the story above.

• President swears in parliament's judges

  Who holds it: Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek and the governing coalition

  The constitution gives the Sejm the power to elect tribunal judges, and the president's role is to swear them in, not to choose them. The court was politicized under the previous government and its leadership blocked lawfully elected judges. The crisis ends without any constitutional change once the president recognizes those judges and they take up their duties. A democratic state cannot give way to force.

  In their words: Polish Radio English Section ↗

• Repair the court, but only through lawful means

  Who holds it: Some analysts and legal experts critical of both sides, including Simone Rodan-Benzaquen of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

  The tribunal has been compromised for more than a decade, and the crisis predates the current government, so restoring the rule of law is a legitimate aim. But the legitimacy of that repair depends on the legality and proportionality of the methods used. Friday's actions raise serious questions on both counts, while the institutions meant to settle the dispute have become part of it.

  In their words: Fox News interview with Simone Rodan-Benzaquen ↗

• Reverse Friday's move and restart talks

  Who holds it: President Karol Nawrocki, his office (Marcin Przydacz, Zbigniew Bogucki, Rafał Leśkiewicz), Law and Justice and Confederation

  Friday's suspension of the tribunal's president and the police presence at the court had no legal basis and amounted to a forced takeover of a constitutional body. Bogdan Święczkowski remains the lawful president. Judges should be legitimate, not chosen to serve one government. The government caused the crisis, so it must withdraw the police and bring a concrete proposal for a restart.

  In their words: Euronews interview with Marcin Przydacz ↗