- Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office has asked the Supreme Court to lift the immunity of judges Piotr Schab, Przemysław Radzik and Michał Lasota, accusing them of posing as disciplinary prosecutors after their alleged dismissal by the Minister of Justice.
- The charge is absurd, because no provision of Polish law empowers the Minister to dismiss the disciplinary prosecutors before the end of their term, and the Supreme Court has almost uniformly held these dismissals ineffective. If anyone should face criminal liability, it is rather Ministers Adam Bodnar and Waldemar Żurek.
- The prosecutors’ actions follow a familiar pattern: high-profile charges designed to destroy reputations, with no effective rulings to follow. Similar steps have recently been taken against prosecutor Michał Ostrowski, who in February 2025 opened an investigation into a coup d’état against Poland’s constitutional order.
- On October 14, 2026, Minister Żurek ordered an immediate break in the official duties of judges Schab, Radzik and Lasota, relying solely on the motions filed by the prosecutors who answer to him. As the statutory conditions are not met, the orders can be expected to be set aside – as happened in earlier, similar cases in which the Minister acted on political motives.
In Poland, the Minister of Justice also serves as Prosecutor General. Since 2024, the government of Donald Tusk has sought to take control of the disciplinary system for judges. Its main obstacle has been the Disciplinary Prosecutor for Judges of the Common Courts and his two deputies, appointed in 2022 for a fixed four-year term. Ministers Adam Bodnar and Waldemar Żurek simply announced their “dismissal” in 2025, even though no statute grants them such a power – and the Supreme Court refused to recognize it. Now the prosecutors subordinate to Żurek have gone a step further: they accuse the three judges of impersonating the very office they lawfully held.
On October 9, 2026, the National Prosecutor’s Office asked the Supreme Court for permission to hold judges Piotr Schab, Przemysław Radzik and Michał Lasota criminally liable. The core charge is exceeding their authority by posing as the Disciplinary Prosecutor or his deputy despite their dismissal by the Minister of Justice (Art. 227 in conjunction with Art. 231(1) of the Criminal Code).
One cannot impersonate an office from which no one has lawfully been removed
As we have pointed out thirteen times already (!), Art. 112(3) of the Law on the System of Common Courts provides that the Minister appoints the Disciplinary Prosecutor and his deputies “for a four-year term”, but it does not provide for their dismissal before the term expires. Art. 7 of the Polish Constitution leaves no doubt:
The organs of public authority shall function on the basis of, and within the limits of, the law.
It follows – as Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal held as early as its resolution of May 10, 1994 (ref. W 7/94), issued after President Lech Wałęsa had removed the head of the National Broadcasting Council without any power to do so – that the competences of public authorities cannot be presumed. The Supreme Court recalled this principle in its decision of December 8, 2025 (ref. II ZOW 80/22) and confirmed the unlawfulness of the dismissals in at least five other rulings in 2025.
Since the dismissals were unlawful, it is rather Ministers Adam Bodnar and Waldemar Żurek who should answer under Art. 231 of the Criminal Code for exceeding their authority by acting without a legal basis.
Żurek’s prosecutors as judges in their own case
The motions were filed by the Internal Affairs Department of the National Prosecutor’s Office, which answers to the Prosecutor General – that is, to Minister Żurek himself. And it is targeting the very judges who, as disciplinary prosecutors, accused Żurek in 2022 of dating court rulings on days when he was away from his court in Kraków. As attorney Bartosz Lewandowski, Ph.D., aptly asked:
Minister, isn’t it the case that you are using the prosecution service to settle scores with the judges-disciplinary prosecutors who brought charges against you […]? […] Is it true that in this matter a court ordered the prosecution service to open an investigation and that it is being conducted precisely by the Internal Affairs Department […]?
The answer is yes. In January 2025, a court in Katowice overturned the refusal to open that investigation; in December 2025 it was still pending, and nothing is known of its outcome. Toward the disciplinary prosecutors, by contrast, the same department shows remarkable zeal – it even sought to lift Schab’s immunity for allegedly defaming Żurek, which the Supreme Court refused on July 7, 2026. The allegation of “usurping the office” had also served in January 2026 as a pretext for a police raid on the Disciplinary Prosecutor’s office at the seat of the National Council of the Judiciary (NCJ).
Further harassment: the Minister removes the judges from the bench
Pressing his advantage, on October 14, 2026, Minister Żurek ordered an immediate break in the official duties of judges Lasota, Schab and Radzik, expressly citing the prosecutors’ motions of October 9 as the basis. The situation is clear – a prosecutor subordinate to Żurek as Prosecutor General formulates the charges, and Żurek as Minister of Justice turns them into grounds for removing the judges from the bench.
As we have written before, this instrument (Art. 130(1) of the Law on the System of Common Courts) may be used only in exceptional circumstances, since it allows an executive body to remove a judge from the bench without a court ruling. The statute therefore requires that the judge be caught in the act of an intentional offense, or that the nature of the act committed require his immediate removal to protect the dignity of the court or the essential interests of the service. Neither condition is met: the alleged “act” is above all the performance of an office in which the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the disciplinary prosecutors, and there can hardly be any urgency when the Minister has known of these circumstances – which he himself created – for nearly a year and a half.
For very similar reasons, on July 2, 2026, the Supreme Court set aside an analogous order against judge Łukasz Piebiak, and in October 2025 a disciplinary court in Warsaw set aside the Minister’s order against judge Jakub Iwaniec. The current orders can be expected to meet the same fate.
These actions reveal Minister Żurek’s true attitude toward judicial independence: a judge who does not share his narrative must reckon with being removed from the bench, even when no statutory condition is met. And the scheme works even when a court ultimately sides with the judge: before the order is set aside, the judge does not adjudicate for weeks, his cases are reassigned, and the press release about his “removal” has already tarnished his reputation. This is probably the real aim of such harassment – it does not need to survive in court to be achieved. That is why every groundless use of Art. 130 should give rise to the State Treasury’s liability for damages toward the judge – perhaps even with recourse against the Minister – and conduct as openly purposeful as Żurek’s should be examined as a possible criminal abuse of authority (Art. 231(1) of the Criminal Code).
Summary
Once again, the script is the same as in the case of the members of the previous NCJ, who were charged with disciplinary offenses merely for sitting on the Council – after which the current majority in the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, elected a new NCJ under the very same provisions. First comes a loud announcement that destroys reputations, then silence: a motion to lift the three judges’ immunity for allegedly concealing case files was filed as early as July 2024 and in May 2026 was still awaiting a ruling. Meanwhile, Art. 42(3) of the Polish Constitution provides:
Everyone shall be presumed innocent of a charge until his guilt is determined by the final judgment of a court.
The association Veritas et Ius – In the Service of the Nation summed up the situation aptly:
The prosecution service is not a court, a charge is not proof of guilt, and political self-confidence is no substitute for the law. The rule of law is not a theater in which the guilty are named first and a justification is sought afterward.
Nor is this the prosecutors’ only such stunt. On the same day, they sought to lift the immunity of Deputy Prosecutor General Michał Ostrowski – the prosecutor who in February 2025 opened an investigation into a coup d’état against Poland’s constitutional order – over 41 trips in an official car between Warsaw and his home, a car he was given during the pandemic, when rail connections were cut. A prosecutor is thus being prosecuted for business trips… from work to home. The Independent Association of Prosecutors “Ad Vocem” rightly sees this as political retaliation against a prosecutor who had the courage to stand up to violations of the law.
As long as the Prosecutor General, instead of being guided by genuine concern for the rule of law, uses his position mainly to settle political and personal scores, our portal will, unfortunately, have plenty to write about.
Source of illustration: iStock.
