The Chairwoman of the Tribunal of State, Małgorzata Manowska, has still not convened a meeting of the full bench of the Tribunal regarding a series of questions submitted on the basis of the motion to exclude a judge of the Constitutional Tribunal from the case of the former head of the National Broadcasting Council, Maciej Świrski, said Przemysław Rosati, a member of the Tribunal of Justice, on Thursday. The deadline for convening a meeting is April 4.
A series of questions were sent to the full bench of the State Tribunal resulting from the consideration of a request to exclude one of the members of the Constitutional Tribunal from the case of the former head of the National Broadcasting Council, Maciej Świrski. Their formulation was decided in early March by the judges of the Constitutional Tribunal hearing the application for exclusion: Przemysław Rosati, Marek Mikołajczyk and Piotr Zientarski.
The series of questions concerns the mechanism for shaping the adjudicating panels of the Court of Justice, which – according to the justification for the questions – should be defined by law and in the regulations of the Court of Justice related to the act, and not by order of the President of the Court of Justice.
As Judge Rosati, who provided the justification for the decision of the Court of Justice, pointed out at that time, “neither the Constitution of the Republic of Poland nor the Act on the Court of Justice and the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice grant the President of the Court of Justice the competence to issue orders specifying the procedure and issues of statutory importance.” He also obliged Manowska to convene a meeting of the full bench of the Court of Justice “no later than April 4 this year under penalty of disciplinary action.”
The above-mentioned order of the President of the Constitutional Tribunal (and therefore the First President of the Supreme Court) Małgorzata Manowska of June 13, 2024 introduced the principle according to which the adjudicating panels in cases brought to the Tribunal will be appointed by the president of this body (who by operation of law is the First President of the Supreme Court) based on the results of a previously conducted drawing.
This is how the composition of the former head of the National Broadcasting Council was formed in September 2025, which includes: chairman Maciej Miłosz and members Marcin Radwan-Röhrenschef, Piotr Sak, Marcin Wawrzyniak and Adrian Salus.
The prosecutor in the case, Maciej Tomczykiewicz (KO), filed a motion to exclude Judge Sak. Thus, in March, when examining this application, it was decided to formulate questions to the full bench of the Court of Justice.
On Thursday, in “Sygnały Dnia” of Polish Radio, Rosati said that the full composition of the Constitutional Tribunal has not yet been invited to such a meeting. In the conversation, he recalled that the Tribunal would return to the request to exclude Sak from the proceedings against Świrski on April 8, Wednesday. He also emphasized that no meeting of the full bench of the Constitutional Tribunal has been convened since 2024, despite requests to this effect.
He also assessed that the way in which the Act on the Constitutional Tribunal was written, as well as the procedural tools provided for it, are “simply defective” and “do not actually allow this body to function efficiently.”
Rosati assessed that the State Tribunal is “in a beautiful theory” a body to which, among others, the following people are responsible for violations of the constitution and the law. the president, prime minister, ministers, the head of the National Broadcasting Council, or the president of the National Bank of Poland, i.e. the most important officials in Poland. However, as he noted, the “instruments” created for the Court of Justice by politicians “are such that the Tribunal is unable to implement these competences.”
Manowska, referring to the questions formulated in a statement in March, said that setting the deadline for convening the meeting by April 4 “does not fit within the limits set by law, and at the same time gives the impression of a solution based on an ad hoc idea rather than on a carefully conducted normative analysis.” “Expecting that an issue of this importance would be examined within a month and a half could be considered naive, if not for the fact that the overall circumstances indicate that it is rather a clearly politically motivated action aimed at achieving the expected result in advance,” emphasized the chairwoman of the Constitutional Tribunal.
The initial motion to bring Świrski before the State Tribunal was submitted to the Sejm by a group of 185 MPs in May 2024. The then Minister of Culture, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, pointed out that the head of the National Broadcasting Council did not pay license fees to the public media. The application was reviewed by the Sejm Committee for Constitutional Responsibility, which on June 12, 2025, adopted a report recommending that the Sejm adopt the application.
PiS MPs were against bringing the head of the National Broadcasting Council before the Court of Justice. They appealed to the Constitutional Tribunal about the provisions that make this possible. In mid-July last year, after examining the application of a group of PiS MPs, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that two provisions regulating the holding of a member of the National Broadcasting Council accountable before the State Tribunal are unconstitutional.
In a resolution adopted in March 2024, the Sejm stated that “taking into account, in the activities of a public authority, decisions of the Constitutional Tribunal issued in violation of the law may be considered a violation of the principle of legalism by these bodies.” Since the Sejm adopted that resolution, the Constitutional Tribunal's judgments have not been published in the Journal of Laws.
At the end of July 2025, the Sejm voted in favor of calling Świrski constitutionally liable before the State Tribunal. After the Sejm adopted a resolution to bring Świrski before the Court of Justice, the Marshal of the Sejm forwarded the resolution together with the documents to the State Tribunal.
Świrski did not recognize the decision of the Sejm, but on July 28, 2025, the members of the Council decided to dismiss him from his position as chairman of the National Broadcasting Council. Agnieszka Glapiak is the new chairman. (PAP)
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