1 Ewa Łętowska 1 Aneta Wiewiórowska Domagalska 2 A “good” change in the Polish Constitutional Tribunal? 3 SUMMARY: The article presents the development of the constitutional crisis in Poland after the 2015 elections, won by Prawo i Sprawiedliwość. The changes that are taking place in Poland at the moment (the new legislation and the general political attitude presented by the governing party) do not favour liberal democracy in its classical, parliamentarian meaning, but aim at concentrating political power (dominance of the executive branch represented by a political leader). Disarming institutional system that secures balancing of powers is one element of this process. The changes are carried out in the name of the will of the people that cannot be tamed or stopped by law, which places itself above the people. The Constitutional Tribunal, as a guardian of the Constitution (the only body that can adjudicate on the conformity with the Constitution) is one of the first victims of this policy. 1. Political and legal background A) [2015 elections] The parliamentary elections that took place in Poland on 25 October 2015 gave victory to the right-wing conservative party Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, further: PiS) and its leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. With the voter turnout at 50.92%, a total of 37.58% of the votes gave PiS an overall majority in the lower chamber of the Polish Parliament (the Sejm): 235 seats out of 460. 4 This followed the presidential election in May 2015, which was won by Andrzej Duda, also from PiS. While winning both these elections gave PiS a lot of political strength, its majority in the Sejm does not give PiS a sufficient number of votes in order to change the Polish Constitution of 1997. Indeed, in the campaign leading up to the election, PiS’s presented manifesto did not include radical changes to the political regime. The party’s slogan was “A good change”, which sounded very attractive to an electorate who were weary of the eight years of conservative-liberal-popular coalition. The governing party’s lack of 1 Professor of the Polish Academy of Science, justice emeritus of the Constitutional Tribunal, Warsaw. 2 PhD, Senior Researcher at the European Legal Studies Institute, Osnabrück University. 3 The authors would like to thank Mr Nicholas Faulkner for the invaluable help in revising the language. 4 The opposition (the party that previously ruled for eight years – Platforma Obywatelska, along with Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe and a new liberal party – Nowoczesna) got 182 seats. There were 42 seats for the new populist ‘party’ Kukiz’15, and 1 seat for the German minority. The coalition of left wing parties did not reach the required eight per cent threshold.