The general assembly is meant to approve the court’s 2027 budget and, Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska says, to choose by random draw the panels that would hear disciplinary cases against the Tribunal' suspended president and his deputy.
An announcement published on the institution's website on Monday sets the meeting for 3:30 p.m. at its Warsaw headquarters.
Also, it says the assembly is urgent because work on the 2027 state budget is under way, and that judges are therefore being given less than the usual seven days’ notice.
Korwin-Piotrowska told Polish Radio that the law requires two-thirds of the court’s 15 judges to be present.
Asked whether that threshold falls because of the suspension of the court’s president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and his deputy, Bartłomiej Sochański, and because of the status of a third judge, Jarosław Wyrembak, she said the assembly would decide.
She would only chair it, she added.
In her view, the two suspended judges cannot take part because they are on a break from duty, and neither can Wyrembak, whom she called "defectively appointed," pointing to a 2021 European Court of Human Rights ruling that criticised the composition of a Tribunal panel.
That would leave 12 judges entitled to vote, she noted, but the gathering would decide how the two-thirds is calculated.
She said she assumed there would be a quorum, the minimum number of judges needed for a valid meeting, but accepted that the assembly might not go ahead without one.
Attending, Korwin-Piotrowska stressed, is a judge’s duty, not a choice.
If the seven judges chosen under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government stayed away, the assembly itself would rule on whether it could proceed.
The crisis began on Friday, when a notice on the Tribunal’s website said Święczkowski and Sochański had been suspended for a month and that Korwin-Piotrowska, a judge chosen by the current parliament, would lead the court.
She has said the allegations against Święczkowski include refusing to let "properly elected" judges hear cases, which she argued could threaten the court’s work in 2027.
The Tribunal, which rules on whether laws comply with the constitution, has been a political battleground since 2015, when PiS took power.
The latest row centres on new judges chosen by the current parliament.
President Karol Nawrocki, an ally of PiS, has refused to swear in most of them, so they took the oath in parliament instead.
Święczkowski says that ceremony had no legal effect and has refused to let those judges hear cases.
Overnight into Saturday, Nawrocki cut short a trip to Senegal and went to the court.
Media have published footage that shows him entering the building and a confrontation between his team and judges chosen by the current parliament.
The two sides give different accounts of what happened.
Korwin-Piotrowska has accused the president of exceeding his powers, and his office has said it will file a complaint with prosecutors over the incident.
Nawrocki then called urgent consultations with parties in parliament, saying the constitutional order had been violated.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk ruled out compromise over the Tribunal in a televised address on Saturday.
A statement bearing the names of seven judges, including Święczkowski and Sochański, called Korwin-Piotrowska’s actions "completely unlawful."
She said it was unsigned and that she could not be sure all of them had issued it.
(ał)
Source: PAP