The Chancellery of the Sejm counterattacks: Recruitment for the National Council of the Judiciary is legal, the Constitutional Tribunal is untrue
The current recruitment of judicial members of the National Council of the Judiciary is carried out in accordance with procedures and standards, the Chancellery of the Sejm emphasized on Friday in a statement referring to what it said was “false information” from Thursday's hearing at the Constitutional Tribunal.
On Thursday, the Constitutional Tribunal considered a request to examine the constitutionality of the provisions on the submission and verification of judicial candidacies in the procedure preceding the election of the judicial composition of the National Council of the Judiciary by the Sejm. The Tribunal found two provisions unconstitutional; he also stated that the effects of the judgment “should be taken into account” in the ongoing proceedings aimed at electing 15 judges to the National Council of the Judiciary.
The Chancellery of the Sejm assessed on Friday that during the hearing there was “false information regarding the current procedure” for selecting Council members. “They require a decisive response and denial. The Chancellery of the Sejm emphasizes that the current recruitment is carried out in accordance with procedures and standards,” the statement emphasized.
As the Chancellery of the Sejm noted, during the hearing in the Constitutional Tribunal, “allegations were raised regarding the alleged failure to take into account citizens' support in the process of electing members of the National Council of the Judiciary.” She pointed out that judge Maciej Nawacki – a member of the National Council of the Judiciary representing the Council – allegedly said that “the Speaker of the Sejm (Włodzimierz Czarzasty) did not take into account, among other things, the support expressed by citizens' lists, approximately 300,000 citizens' votes were thrown away.” This statement, we read, was also repeated by the President of the Constitutional Tribunal, Bogdan Święczkowski, the rapporteur of the case heard on Thursday.
According to the Chancellery of the Sejm, these statements are “untrue and contrary to the state of affairs.” The law firm emphasized that in March the Sejm informed that in the case of all applications for participation in the recruitment to the Council, the requirement was to attach at least 2,000 signatures for each candidate have been positively verified.
Moreover, she pointed out, in the current recruitment of judges of the Council, “there was no case in which the Marshal of the Sejm refused to accept a candidate's application due to submitting a smaller number of signatures of support than the required number.” Similarly, the Chancellery noted, there was no situation that would justify the Speaker of the Sejm turning to the National Electoral Commission in case of doubts as to the correctness of submitting the required number of signatures.
She also referred to the statement that Czarzasty “did not respond to the requests of some candidates to the National Council of the Judiciary to enable them to carry out the substitute procedure, i.e. self-assessment.” The point of this procedure is that if the president of the court competent for the candidate proposed for the National Council of the Judiciary does not submit, within the prescribed deadline, information about, among others: the jurisprudential achievements of this candidate, the Speaker of the Sejm requests this candidate to prepare such information.
“The Chancellery of the Sejm received letters from two candidates with applications for the use of the so-called substitute procedure. It is worth adding that one of these letters was received only on April 16, 2026 in the morning, therefore it is still being considered,” the Chancellery said. She added that in the case of the second application, the marshal replied to the candidate that the competent authority had prepared and submitted information on its jurisprudence in a timely manner. In this letter, he added that there are no legal obstacles to having information about the candidate prepared by the vice-president of the court, replacing the president of the court.
At the hearing, members of the current National Council of the Judiciary were also to “accuse” the Speaker of the Sejm of “incorrect presentation of the modes of supporting candidates for the National Council of the Judiciary on the websites of the Sejm.” Judge Anna Dalkowska – a member of the current National Council of the Judiciary, who also represented the Council at Thursday's hearing of the Constitutional Tribunal – was said to have stated, among other things, that on the Sejm's website some of the proposed candidates were presented as if they had “only one mode of support”.
The Act on the National Council of the Judiciary provides that a person who has received signatures of support from 25 judges or 2,000 people may run for the Council. citizens. According to Dalkowska, candidates who received two types of support indicated, but submitted one application, are listed on the Sejm website “as if they had only one judicial application, i.e. there is no civic one.”
In turn, judges who submitted two applications for their candidacies “suspend these candidates taking into account both of these procedures.” According to the Chancellery, the representative of the National Council of the Judiciary accused the Speaker of the Sejm that, through such a way of presenting the candidates, “the voices of citizens (…) were simply nullified.”
“The Marshal of the Sejm did not interfere in any way with the manner in which authorized entities wanted to nominate candidates. Nominations were submitted in two modes, but in one letter – this is how they were presented, as noticed by Anna Dalkowska,” the Chancellery of the Sejm commented on this issue. In her opinion, in such a situation one cannot talk about “eliminating the citizen mode” because “none of such reports questioned the effectiveness of using this mode.”
The Chancellery also emphasized that the data posted in the Sejm's information system “clearly shows which applications were submitted by a group of citizens, because in these cases the applications included lists of support from citizens as attachments.”
She also referred to statements according to which the Marshal of the Sejm did not consider one of the candidates for the National Council of the Judiciary “without giving a reason.”
The law firm emphasized that in the announcement of April 7 this year. “it was explicitly stated” that “out of 61 reports (…) one report was not made public and, as a consequence, it will not be further processed.” She added that the notification did not meet the requirement specified in Art. 11b section 1 of the Act on the National Court Register, i.e. the requirement to submit an application by a proxy, which must be indicated in a written declaration, of the first fifteen persons on the list.
The procedure for the Sejm to elect judicial members of the National Council of the Judiciary for the new term has been ongoing for several weeks. The Chancellery of the Sejm informed at the beginning of April that this election is initially planned for the session of the Sejm, which will be held on May 13-15 this year.
According to the currently applicable regulations – introduced during the rule of the United Right – the Sejm elects 15 judge-members of the National Council of the Judiciary from among judges of the Supreme Court, common courts, administrative courts and military courts for a joint 4-year term of office. A group of 2,000 people are entitled to nominate a candidate for the Council. citizens or 25 judges still adjudicating. Candidates are submitted to the Speaker of the Sejm within 30 days from the date of the announcement of the commencement of the election procedure to the National Council of the Judiciary.
The Marshal of the Sejm, Włodzimierz Czarzasty, has already made public the applications of 60 judges – candidates for the National Council of the Judiciary. Meanwhile, on Monday – April 20 – the assessment of these candidates by the judges' assemblies in Poland is announced. Such opinions are not provided for in the Act, but were announced by the government as the so-called plan B – after the presidential veto of the amendment to the act on the National Council of the Judiciary, which restored the election of the judges of the National Council of the Judiciary by judicial circles. This plan assumes that the Sejm elects people to the National Council of the Judiciary whose candidacies are nominated by judges during votes at meetings. (PAP)
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