Riot police have been deployed at Poland's Constitutional Court amid an escalating stand-off between the government and the court's top judges. The row pits the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk against his predecessors from the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, and it has now drawn in the president.

The police intervention came after Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek said he had requested stripping the court's President Bogdan Swieczkowski and Vice-President Bartlomiej Sochanski of their immunity from prosecution so that criminal charges could be brought against them. Tusk has vowed to depoliticise the judiciary, and on Friday he defended the move as PiS supporters gathered outside the court premises in Warsaw in protest.

The court answered on social media. In a post, it wrote that the two judges the government wants to prosecute were still the legally appointed senior justices of the court. "All persons participating in these actions are committing the crime of a coup d'etat," it said.

Tusk framed the confrontation as a delayed reckoning. "Restoring the rule of law is our duty," he wrote in a social media post. "After years of Law and Justice's lawlessness, this is a difficult, sometimes painful process that requires decisive action. There is no other way."

President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by PiS, has now entered the constitutional court, according to his chief of staff. Nawrocki cancelled a trip to Senegal mid-air in order to attend to the confrontation in Warsaw; he had been on his way to the Summer Youth Olympic Games in Dakar. Riot police were deployed to prevent any demonstrators from entering the court building.

The background explains why a court building needed police. The PiS-led government took office in 2015 and moved swiftly to appoint judges to the court to gain a majority there, because the court has the power to decide on the legality of legislation. Leading European courts, the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, subsequently ruled that the PiS majority had elected three of the judges improperly because they were duplicating positions that had been validly filled by the previous parliament. The European courts ruled that Poland's Constitutional Court was no longer an "independent and impartial tribunal," and Tusk's government has used those rulings as a basis to stop publishing the tribunal's rulings.

Tusk has failed to undo the PiS-era changes, partly because Nawrocki and his PiS-backed predecessor Andrzej Duda used their presidential vetoes to block his attempts. Nawrocki has also refused to swear in five Constitutional Court judges elected by parliament since March on the grounds of alleged flaws in their selection procedure. One of those judges, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, has now been placed in temporary charge of the court.

Earlier this month, the Council of Europe's advisory body on constitutional matters, the Venice Commission, said Nawrocki should swear in the judges to allow them to sit on the court's bench. Justice Minister Zurek said Swieczkowski and his vice-president should face criminal charges for not allowing the judges to adjudicate. Some of Tusk's supporters have accused him of failing to act decisively to reverse the PiS-era changes.

The immediate question is what the police deployment is meant to achieve. No arrests have been announced, the immunity request's status has not been described in the reports, and the court says it will not recognise the government's authority over its bench. The confrontation is therefore political rather than legal in its current phase, with each side claiming the constitution as its mandate.

The European dimension adds pressure the government cannot ignore. European courts have already ruled that the tribunal was no longer independent, and a Polish court whose legitimacy is contested weakens Warsaw's position in negotiations that outlast any single government. That is why the government frames the confrontation as a legal repair job and the opposition frames it as a takeover. The wider stakes are institutional. Poland has been under a European Union rule-of-law procedure for years over the PiS-era changes, and the current stand-off determines whether Tusk's government can restore the court's standing without provoking a constitutional crisis in the president's office. The US Supreme Court's refusal to hear a 9/11 plea challenge is a reminder that judicial-legislative boundary fights are not unique to Poland, while Israel's post-election deadlock shows how quickly a divided system can stall. The UK's revised business investment figures are a reminder that rule-of-law risk feeds directly into the investment climate.

The limits of this account are clear. The immunity request has been reported by the BBC but not confirmed by the justice ministry's published documents, the court's social media posts are statements by one side in the dispute, and neither the president's office nor the cabinet has issued a full legal justification. No court has ruled on the legality of the police deployment.