The chambers approved all six candidates put forward by its leadership and rejected two nominees submitted by the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek then urged President Karol Nawrocki to swear in the new judges without delay, warning that the government had a "plan B" if he refused.
The six elected judges are Krystian Markiewicz, until now head of the justice ministry’s codification commission on the judiciary and prosecution service; Maciej Taborowski, a law professor at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences; Marcin Dziurda, a law professor at the University of Warsaw; Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, until now president of the Regional Court in the southwestern city of Opole; Dariusz Szostek, a professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice, southern Poland; and attorney Magdalena Bentkowska.
They were chosen for six vacant seats on the 15-member Constitutional Tribunal. Under Polish law, parliamentary approval requires an absolute majority in the presence of at least half of all lawmakers.
The six winning candidates each cleared that threshold with 236 or 237 votes. Two PiS-backed candidates, Artur Kotowski of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw and Michał Skwarzyński of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin in the east of the country, fell short.
Before the vote, the head of the president's office, Zbigniew Bogucki, accused the ruling majority of trying to take control of the court.
He said the president “certainly will not allow it.”
Ruling coalition lawmakers said the move was an attempt to restore the tribunal’s credibility after years of controversy.
Maciej Tomczykiewicz of the governing Civic Coalition (KO) said “a new dawn is coming” for the tribunal and that it would be "returned to the people."
Anna Maria Żukowska of the Left said the current court “simply does not function.”
Marcelina Zawisza of the left-wing opposition Razem party said the decision would likely prolong the standoff rather than solve it.
After the vote, Żurek said he hoped the documents would reach the President's Office on Friday and that the swearing-in could take place next week.
He said the president had a constitutional duty to administer the oath promptly.
“Do not try to break the constitution,” Żurek said in his appeal to Nawrocki. He did not say what the government’s alternative plan would involve.
The dispute comes against the backdrop of a decade-long conflict over the Constitutional Tribunal, once one of Poland’s most important state institutions. In recent years, many lawyers and politicians have questioned the legitimacy of some of its rulings and of some of the people sitting on the bench.
In a resolution passed in March 2024, MPs said that taking into account tribunal rulings issued in violation of the law could itself breach the principle of legality. They also declared that two current members of the court, Jarosław Wyrembak and Justyn Piskorski, were not Constitutional Tribunal judges.
Since that resolution, tribunal rulings have not been published in the Journal of Laws, Poland’s official legal gazette.
In a separate resolution adopted on Friday, lawmakers said it was necessary to reshape the court’s membership so that it could meet the standards of a lawful, independent, and impartial court and rebuild public trust.
Lawmakers said the overriding goal was to restore the tribunal’s ability to perform its constitutional role in line with Polish law.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP