2026-01-14 20:10
publication
2026-01-14 20:10
The deputy president of the Tribunal of State, Piotr Andrzejewski, asked – as he put it – National Prosecutor Dariusz Barski to take a position legalizing the prosecutor's office's requests regarding the immunity of Małgorzata Manowska. He added that until then, the case would not be considered on its merits.
Earlier, at the end of October last year, Andrzejewski ordered the return of the application to the National Prosecutor's Office to waive the immunity of Manowska – the first president of the Supreme Court and president of the Court of Justice, because it was not signed – as indicated – by Dariusz Barski, who “continues to perform the function of the National Prosecutor”.
The deputy head of the Court of Justice found that the personnel decisions of Jacek Bilewicz and Dariusz Korneluk (heads of the PK from 2024) as – according to Andrzejewski – “usurpers” may raise doubts as to legality, and therefore the application does not come from an “authorized prosecutor”. The National Prosecutor's Office then found that the decision to return another application to waive Manowska's immunity was groundless and aimed at blocking the examination of the case by the State Tribunal.
On Wednesday, the Court of Justice announced another order of Andrzejewski, who asked Barski – removed from the position of National Prosecutor in January 2024 – to take a position that would legalize the prosecutor's office's applications in the Manowska case and enable their substantive examination.
“After the duplicate National Prosecutor takes a position without the consent of the President of the Republic of Poland required as a sine – qua – non condition, i.e. the legalization procedure is completed – the applications will be immediately examined,” we read in the order of the Vice-President of the State Tribunal. Andrzejewski also added that hearing cases will be possible only if the current composition of the Tribunal retains its judicial capacity, despite statutory exclusions of its members. Until these conditions are met, all applications submitted without the required procedure, as well as applications submitted by persons excluded under the Act, are to remain unconsidered.
The application returned by the Court of Justice was the second submitted by the PK concerning the lifting of Manowska's immunity. The first one from July last year. included three charges: exceeding powers in connection with votes in the Supreme Court College, failure to fulfill duties in connection with failure to convene a meeting of the Court of Justice and failure to implement the judgment in the case of Judge Paweł Juszczyszyn.
The meeting on this matter on September 3 ended with a conflict over the exclusion of 12 members of the TS. This was requested by Manowska's defense, arguing that these members were questioned as witnesses in the thread regarding the failure to convene a meeting of the Court of Justice. After the break, the chairman of the panel, Piotr Andrzejewski, did not return to the courtroom, and some judges adjourned the case until September 22. However, Andrzejewski canceled this meeting and on September 18 – in a three-person panel – he caused the proceedings to be discontinued.
At the end of September, the PK sent a renewed application to the Court of Justice regarding Manowska – in connection with a sufficiently justified suspicion of committing two crimes – without taking into account the act of failing to convene the full bench of the Court of Justice. At the beginning of October, Manowska announced that she would not undertake any activities reserved for the chairwoman of the Court of Justice in the matter of the renewed application, and that the activities in this case would be performed by Judge Andrzejewski as a senior judge.
Andrzejewski's current order also shows that the prosecutor's office's request from the end of September duplicates an earlier request that has already been legally concluded. Therefore – according to the deputy head of the Court of Justice – it has the nature of an unacceptable attempt to resume the proceedings, burdened with the same formal shortcomings as before. Moreover, Andrzejewski pointed out that the ruling of September 18 has the force of res judicata and is binding on both the State Tribunal and the prosecutor's office.
The dispute over who is the National Prosecutor began in 2024, when in January the then head of the Ministry of Justice, Prosecutor General Adam Bodnar, stated that the reinstatement and appointment of Dariusz Barski as the National Prosecutor in 2022 by the previous Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro “were made in violation of applicable regulations.” Then, by virtue of the Prime Minister's decision, Prosecutor Jacek Bilewicz became the acting National Prosecutor – until Barski's successor was selected in the competition. The competition was won by prosecutor Dariusz Korneluk, who was appointed by the Prime Minister as the new National Prosecutor in mid-March. (PAP)
nno/mro/
