Tusk "blessed" his deputy's meeting with Mentzen and is now waiting for a text

A photo of two politicians who rarely pose together had Poland talking on Thursday. Now Prime Minister Donald Tusk has weighed in: he knew about the meeting, and he gave it his blessing.

What happened?

On Thursday evening, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, deputy prime minister and leader of the PSL (a junior partner in Tusk's coalition), and Sławomir Mentzen, leader of the opposition Konfederacja, posted the same photo on X. Mentzen captioned it "it's going well". Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote: "Everyone's talking about it... how was the day? Very busy."

Asked about it in the Sejm (Poland's lower house), Tusk said Kosiniak-Kamysz is "not only a deputy prime minister but a trustworthy man, my friend". He added that he had been told about the meeting beforehand: "I blessed it." There was no need to "over-interpret" it, he said, and "everyone meets whom they like and whom they deserve".

Why does it matter?

The two men were talking about the crisis around the Constitutional Tribunal, Poland's top constitutional court. Earlier, Kosiniak-Kamysz presented a bill he calls a "constitutional reset" and asked Konfederacja and Rozwój Plus for support.

Under the draft, the National Assembly (both houses together) could declare the Tribunal permanently unable to work. It would need a request from the National Council of the Judiciary and a majority of at least 3/5, or 336 lawmakers. With the same majority, in one vote, it would choose a new 15-member Tribunal: five judges each for terms of 3, 6 and 9 years.

The Sejm speaker would propose candidates after consulting, among others, the heads of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court, and with the president's prior consent. On the day of the vote, the current judges' terms would end and they would retire.

The conflict flared last Friday. Judges chosen by this Sejm announced that Anna Korwin-Piotrowska was now running the Tribunal. She ordered a break in the duties of its president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and vice-president, Bartłomiej Sochański.

What's next?

Tusk also spoke about a meeting with President Karol Nawrocki. After Tuesday's National Security Council session, he offered a one-on-one talk to find a lasting way to lower tensions. Nawrocki had called the situation a serious constitutional crisis.

"I'm waiting for information. We agreed on a text message from the president, because he said he'd be the one to invite," Tusk said. The president's chief of staff, Zbigniew Bogucki, said details would come after Nawrocki returns from a Visegrad Group summit in Slovakia.