Group of Supreme Court judges rejects legitimacy of chamber tasked with validating election result

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

A group of 28 judges on Poland’s Supreme Court have jointly signed a letter declaring that the court’s chamber tasked with confirming the results of the recent presidential election is illegitimate and therefore cannot issue a valid ruling.

The development marks the latest twist in a controversy that has seen figures from Poland’s ruling coalition – whose candidate lost the election – calling into question the fairness of vote-counting and the legitimacy of the Supreme Court chamber tasked with overseeing the process.

The body in question, known as the chamber of extraordinary oversight and public affairs, was created under the former Law and Justice (PiS) administration and is not recognised as legitimate by the current Polish government and European courts.

The chamber is required to assess all legal complaints relating to the presidential election and to confirm its result by 2 July. However, on Monday this week it was announced that two of its judges had been removed from duty for refusing to carry out tasks assigned to them.

They had taken that stance because they said they recognise a 2023 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) finding that the chamber is “not an independent and impartial tribunal established by law”.

The reason for that CJEU ruling – and for the current government’s similar view – is that the chamber is filled with judges nominated by the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS) after it was overhauled by PiS in a manner that rendered it no longer independent of political influence.

On Thursday, state broadcaster TVP obtained a copy of a letter signed by 28 other Supreme Court judges likewise rejecting the legitimacy of the oversight chamber. Poland’s Supreme Court has 97 judges who sit in four main chambers.

The 28 signatories are mostly, but not exclusively, made up of judges appointed to the Supreme Court before the KRS was reformed by PiS. Such judges are often called “old” ones while those appointed after PiS’s reforms are called “neo-judges”.

In their letter, which was also later published by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily, they write that “the chamber of extraordinary oversight and public affairs is not a court”, noting that this has been confirmed by “rulings of the Supreme Court and of international tribunals”.

“Since this chamber is not a court, it cannot perform…activities [relating to] the electoral process, which belong exclusively to the Supreme Court,” they add.

Their intervention casts further doubt on the process of verifying the election result. Over 54,000 complaints against the election were submitted to the Supreme Court, and the oversight chamber has been working through them.

On Monday, the Supreme Court’s chief justice, Małgorzata Manowski – a “neo-judge” who has defended the legitimacy of the oversight chamber – said that over 90% of those complaints were “duplicates” based on a template “irresponsibly” shared by Roman Giertych, an MP from the ruling coalition.

Giertych and some other figures in the ruling camp have highlighted reports of irregularities in vote-counting during the second-round run-off of the election.

They say that many of those cases – some of which have been officially confirmed – resulted in votes being wrongly assigned to Karol Nawrocki, the PiS-backed candidate who won the election, instead of Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO).

Those doubts have led some, including Tusk himself, to suggest that a full recount of all votes may be necessary, though Manowska has emphasised that there is no legal mechanism for this to happen.

On Thursday, Tusk’s justice minister, Adam Bodnar, announced that he had filed a request to the Supreme Court for votes to be recounted in almost 1,500 polling stations due to suspected irregularities.

Earlier this year, the ruling coalition also sought to take away the oversight chamber’s responsibility for validating election results and give the task to other Supreme Court judges. However, that move was vetoed by President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally.

In response to the questions being raised around vote-counting, figures from PiS, as well as some independent experts and commentators, say that the number of alleged irregularities, even if all were proven, would not be enough to overturn Nawrocki’s winning margin of around 370,000 votes.

They also point out that the chamber of the Supreme Court whose legitimacy is now being questioned is the same one that confirmed the results of the 2023 parliamentary elections that brought the current government to power, as well as the 2024 local and European elections that were won by the ruling coalition.

PiS therefore accuses the ruling coalition of stirring up the issue simply to cast doubt on Nawrocki’s victory, either in the hope of overturning it or at least undermining his legitimacy.

Nawrocki himself last week appealed to Tusk not to “destroy democracy” by calling into question the validity of the election, while Duda condemned the “post-communists and liberal-leftists” who he said are trying to undermine the result.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

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Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.