MAIN POINTs
1
On September 8, 2026, the Chamber of Professional Responsibility of Poland’s Supreme Court set aside a judgment of the disciplinary court at the Court of Appeal in Gdańsk, holding that the court had been improperly composed because the Minister of Justice had assigned the duties of disciplinary judges without the opinion of the National Council of the Judiciary (NCJ) required by statute.
2
The same day, the Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs issued three rulings confirming that Dariusz Korneluk is not the National Prosecutor — a line opened by resolution I KZP 3/24 and confirmed by the Constitutional Tribunal in case SK 13/24.
3
The courts have not yet spoken on the Academy of Justice (AWS), whose Rector, Michał Sopiński, Ph.D., Minister Waldemar Żurek claims to have dismissed despite serious procedural doubts. On September 10, 2026, the police refused to intervene at the request of the minister’s nominee, who was attempting to take over the university.
The rulings described below belong to a longer sequence. In January 2024, the government of Donald Tusk replaced Poland’s National Prosecutor — the official who in practice directs the prosecution service — in breach of the Law on the Public Prosecutor’s Office. On January 12, 2024, Justice Minister Adam Bodnar handed Dariusz Barski a document declaring that his 2022 appointment had “produced no legal effects,” bypassing the written consent of the President of the Republic that the Act requires for a dismissal. The same day the Prime Minister “entrusted the duties” of National Prosecutor to Jacek Bilewicz, in a procedure the Act does not provide for, and on March 14, 2024, appointed Dariusz Korneluk to the office without the opinion of the President required by law.
Korneluk then carried out a wave of personnel changes in the prosecution service — appointments, secondments and removals whose validity depends on the validity of his own. In parallel, the Ministry of Justice has since 2024 been replacing court presidents and vice-presidents and the disciplinary prosecutors for judges, again without the procedures the law prescribes: Minister Bodnar removed officials the statute gives him no power to remove, and his successor Waldemar Żurek announced some 45 dismissals of court presidents and vice-presidents while ignoring negative opinions of the court colleges of judges and skipping the referral to the National Council of the Judiciary that a negative opinion triggers. The court decisions described in this article are the legal consequence of those choices.
The same pattern is repeating itself yet again. An office in the justice system is held by a person appointed in accordance with the law. The Minister of Justice nevertheless decides — usually on the strength of his own reading of the rules, unsupported by any court ruling — that the appointment was ineffective, or simply announces, with no legal basis and on doubtful factual grounds, that the incumbent has been dismissed. He then installs his own nominee in the same post, insisting against the evidence that the new appointment is valid, even though the courts say precisely the opposite. The past weeks brought several demonstrations of this mechanism.
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Source of cover photo: iStock
