Charges against former Constitutional Court president Przyłębska – faces up to 10 years imprisonment
The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights filed a report with the prosecution alleging a criminal offence by Julia Przyłębska. The former Constitutional Court president denies any breach of the law.
Helsinki Foundation files report with prosecution regarding Constitutional Court panels
The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights submitted a report to the Prosecutor General alleging a well-founded suspicion of committing a criminal offence by former Constitutional Court president Julia Przyłębska, according to fakt.pl. Przyłębska faces up to 10 years imprisonment under Article 231 § 2 of the Penal Code, which concerns exceeding authority by a public official acting to the detriment of public or private interest in order to gain personal benefit.
The charge concerns unlawful interference in the composition of the Constitutional Court bench. According to data obtained by the Foundation, between 2015 and 2020, the composition of benches hearing cases changed in 885 matters pending before the Constitutional Court. In at least 176 of them, decisions to change the panel were made for reasons other than the death of a judge or the expiry of his or her term.
Efforts to obtain this information lasted almost five years. The Helsinki Foundation filed a request for access to public information in 2020 and won the case twice before the Regional Administrative Court in Warsaw and once before the Supreme Administrative Court. The requested data reached the Foundation only at the end of December 2025.
The collected data were compared with lists of Constitutional Court judges sent to the Constitutional Court president, correspondence between Jarosław Wyrembak and Przyłębska, and a report by the Stefan Batory Foundation from 2017, which examined the same issue.
Przyłębska responded to the report on wPolsce24 television, rejecting the accusations. "All panels were designated in accordance with the applicable regulations. There are no strictly defined rules. It is said that the Constitutional Court president designates the panel according to an alphabetical list, but taking into account various additional circumstances," she said.
She also explained that it was necessary to respond flexibly to the current needs of the Constitutional Court. "The Constitutional Court president must also act dynamically, because if there was a complaint that we were resolving too few cases, we had to respond – in the situation of a judge's prolonged absence. And these are all regulations that follow directly from the law. So there was never a situation where the law was breached," Przyłębska stated.
She also distanced herself from the Foundation itself. "It might seem to be a serious organisation, but I already had the impression when we were working in the Constitutional Court that this foundation, after all, does not operate objectively," she said on wPolsce24.
The Helsinki Foundation assessed that the totality of the circumstances indicates that the elements of the offence under Article 231 § 2 of the Penal Code have been satisfied. The prosecution has not yet announced whether it will take further action in this matter.
Source: Google News PL