Polish prosecutors have opened an investigation following a formal complaint by Bogdan Świeczkowski, President of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, who has accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk, his cabinet, and several high-ranking members of parliament and the judiciary of acting as a criminal organization. Świeczkowski alleges that Tusk’s government has been systematically undermining the rule of law since taking office in late 2023, with the ultimate goal of “overthrowing the state system.”
The request for the criminal investigation was brought against the prime minister, all of his ministers, the speaker of the Sejm (the parliament’s lower house), the speaker of the Senate, the president of the Governmental Legislation Center (RCL), as well as several judges and prosecutors.
At a press conference on Wednesday, February 5th, Świeczkowski stated that ever since coming to power in December 2023, the Tusk government and its affiliates had been acting “in an organized criminal group … with a view to changing the constitutional system of the Republic of Poland” and undermining its constitutional bodies, such as the Tribunal, the National Court Register, and the Supreme Court.
As MEP Patryk Jaki (PiS), the co-chairman of the ECR group, explained in a detailed X post, within only the first year of governance, the Tusk government has jailed politicians without fair trial, taken over judicial bodies, seized the public media, defunded opposition parties, and blocked and defied rulings of the constitutional and supreme courts—just a few of the long list of blatant rule of law violations happening in the country every day.
“We’re talking about the crime of coup d’etat here,” Świeczkowski stated at the press conference. Under the Polish criminal code, attempted coup d’etat carries a sentence of 10 years to life in prison.
Świeczkowski also revealed that since Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Adam Bodnar is among the suspects, he personally requested Deputy Prosecutor General Michał Ostrowski to lead the investigation, who confirmed to him that the process has been formally initiated.
In reply, PM Donald Tusk posted a short video on X showing him playing ping-pong in his office and making fun of the allegations.
In an interview on Thursday morning, however, the constitutional court president said there was nothing to laugh about. “I believe we are close to a situation when, within a year or six months, it may happen that armed forces or police are taken to the streets to try to stop social protests,” Świeczkowski warned.
He explained that there was a real danger that the government would not accept the results of the coming presidential elections in May if the conservative side wins, leading to mass unrest and potential clashes with armed police and the military.
Świeczkowski also said he does not know who is actually in charge of Tusk’s “criminal organization,” and that foreign nationals might also be involved, but that will be the role of prosecutors to find out.
The unsaid part might refer to EU officials at the highest level of the Brussels hierarchy. Tusk, a former European Council President, is a close ally of Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, and his rule of law abuses have been celebrated by the Brussels liberal elite right from the start.
In fact, the Commission unlocked Poland’s frozen €110 billion worth of EU funds—that it used to put pressure on the previous conservative PiS government—before Tusk implemented even a single reform to warrant the move. This shows that the EU never truly cared about the rule of law in Poland, it merely weaponized it to facilitate the victory of an ideologically aligned government.
Nonetheless, the opposition hopes that the issue will no longer be so easy to ignore, even though Brussels is still trying to sweep it under the rug. MEP Jacek Ozdoba (PiS/ECR) tried to raise the issue on Thursday at a meeting of the European Parliament’s civil liberties (LIBE) committee, but the committee chair—the EPP’s Javier Zarzalejos, who is from the same group as Tusk—immediately cut his microphone.
“This only shows how much they are afraid of this topic. The case is unprecedented,” Jaki later told the europeanconservative.com. “For the first time in the EU, a prime minister simply occupies the buildings of institutions by force and disregards the court rulings in this case.
