President Karol Nawrocki said on November 12 he will not appoint 46 judges whom he accused of supporting what he described as unconstitutional actions by the government.

The decision intensifies Poland’s long-running dispute over judicial independence. The controversy dates back to the previous PiS government’s overhaul of the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS), the body responsible for appointing judges. Polish and European courts later ruled that the restructured KRS was politically controlled and therefore illegitimate, and so were judges it had appointed since.

Some 2,500 judges are in effect so-called “neo-judges”, whose rulings may be invalid and whose status is questioned by judges who had opposed PiS’s reforms. Nawrocki and PiS say, however, it is judges being appointed now who are not independent.

“I will not grant nominations or promotions to those judges who question the constitutional and legal order of the republic, who listen to the malicious whispers of the justice minister, Waldemar Żurek, who encourages judges to question the constitutional and legal order of Poland,” Nawrocki said.

The government has been trying to roll back PiS’s judiciary reforms. Żurek says neo-judges must be reappointed by a new KRS, while those judges who leaped ranks under the PiS government must return to their previous posts and stand for contests if they want to be reappointed.

These reforms must go through the parliament and eventually be signed off by Nawrocki, who has long said he will block them. The Tusk government does not have enough votes in the parliament to override presidential vetoes, resulting in political deadlock.

In an interview on November 11 with broadcaster wPolsce24, Nawrocki said that if he and the government fail to reach an agreement on resolving the rule-of-law dispute, he would call a national referendum on the issue.

Nawrocki said the questioning of neo-judges’ legitimacy harms “our citizens, ordinary people, who cannot receive a fair court judgment that complies with Polish law”.

The president cited recent cases in which convictions for murder and rape had been overturned - in line with rulings of top EU courts - because the convictions were issued by neo-judges. 

Government spokesman Adam Szłapka denounced the announcement as a “usurpation and attempt to undermine the justice system in Poland, deepening the chaos that has been inflicted on us by [PiS] and [previous PiS-aligned] president Andrzej Duda”.