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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.
Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal (TK), which is filled with judges appointed by the former government, has ruled that its own rulings should be regarded as being in force even though Prime Minister Donald Tusk refuses to publish them – a policy the TK says is “legally unfounded”.
The judgment is certain to be ignored by the government, which points to the fact that the TK contains illegitimately appointed judges.
However, it adds to the sense of chaos afflicting Poland’s judicial system and comes shortly after a business sued Tusk, demanding that he publish TK rulings because failing to do so is causing legal uncertainty and harming its economic interests.
Co dalej z publikacją orzeczeń Trybunału Konstytucyjnego? Jest wyrok TKhttps://t.co/f0Ee9FcEDR
— Rzeczpospolita Prawo (@RPPrawo) September 23, 2025
On Tuesday, the TK announced that it had issued a ruling in response to a request for clarification from a district court asking about the case of a man who was banned for life from driving.
That judgment was made on the basis of a law deemed unconstitutional by the TK in an earlier ruling that has not entered force because it remains unpublished.
That earlier TK ruling is one of over 40 that have not been published by the prime minister because the government does not recognise the legitimacy of the TK in its current form due to the presence of judges unlawfully appointed when PiS was in office.
The TK’s new ruling was issued by a panel of five judges chaired by one of those illegitimate appointees, Jarosław Wyrembak, and also containing two former PiS MPs whom the government argues should recuse themselves from political cases due to a conflict of interest.
In Tuesday’s ruling, the TK found that the provisions of the law stipulating that TK judgments only take force once they are published in the official Journal of Laws is unconstitutional.
“All state authorities, from the moment a TK ruling is announced in the courtroom, are obligated” to respect it, said the tribunal’s chief justice, Bogdan Święczkowski on Tuesday, quoted by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
“The prime minister’s failure to publish TK rulings is unfounded in the applicable law and cannot result in the inability of public authorities to apply them,” he added. “The attributes of TK rulings (their finality and universally binding force) are not eliminated by the legally unfounded practice of not publishing them.”
However, Tusk’s government has argued that publishing rulings issued by an illegitimate body would “perpetuate the rule-of-law crisis”. Its majority in parliament last year passed bills intended to restore the TK’s legitimacy. However, they were blocked by former PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda.
Fifteen months since the change of government, Poland's rule-of-law crisis continues – indeed, many Poles think the situation has got worse.@J_Jaraczewski explains the roots of the crisis, what its impact has been, and how it might be resolved https://t.co/7KOCURV3dU
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) March 17, 2025
That deadlock has contributed to growing chaos in Poland’s legal system. On Monday this week, the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily reported that a business impacted by the situation has filed a lawsuit against Tusk demanding that he publish TK rulings and thereby confirm their validity.
The company last month won a case before the TK confirming that it was no longer required to continue paying for a licence in an area of business with which it was no longer involved.
The prime minister’s failure to publish the TK’s ruling has been “to the detriment of the business’s economic interests”, argues its lawyer.
Spółka z Sanoka skierowała do sądu pozew, w którym żąda nałożenia na premiera obowiązku opublikowania wyroku TK. Do dziś nie opublikowano 46 wyroków TK. https://t.co/u2jZIiqgaG
— Sławek Wikariak (@S_Wikariak) September 23, 2025
Krzysztof Izdebski, a legal expert at the Batory Foundation, a Warsaw-based NGO, told Dziennik Gazeta Prawna that the case is an example of how “the rights and freedoms of citizens are falling victim to…the dispute over the publication of Constitutional Tribunal judgments, [which] is purely political in nature”.
Lower courts are inconsistent with regard to whether or not they adhere to TK rulings that have not been published by the government, “meaning citizens don’t feel equal before the law…because whether their constitutional rights are enforced depends on which court they happen to be sitting in”, says Izdebski.
An opinion poll published last week found that the proportion of Poles who say they distrust their country’s courts has now risen to 57%, the highest level ever recorded and up from 41% when PiS left office in 2023.
Well over half of Poles (57%) say they distrust their country's courts, the highest level ever recorded by pollster @IBRiS_PL.
Distrust has risen significantly since the current government came to power in 2023 pledging to restore the rule of law https://t.co/IWNwpe6MpD
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) September 20, 2025
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.
Main image credit: Grzegorz Krzyżewski BRPO (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)
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.
