What happened
The Constitutional Tribunal capture followed a specific sequence: the outgoing Civic Platform-led parliament had legally appointed five new judges in October 2015, but PiS's incoming parliament refused to swear in three of them and appointed its own replacements instead, with President Duda's active cooperation in accepting the oaths of the disputed appointees.
The 2017 reform of the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS) went further: previously the body's judicial members were elected by judges themselves, a safeguard against political control. PiS transferred this power to parliament, where it held a majority — meaning the body responsible for nominating and disciplining judges became, in practice, a political appointment. Around a quarter of Poland's judiciary today are so-called 'neo-judges' appointed through this politicised process, and their legitimacy remains disputed.
Judges who publicly criticised the changes were targeted through a disciplinary chamber that stripped some of immunity and suspended them from work — widely described by legal scholars and the European Court of Justice as a tool of intimidation rather than legitimate oversight.
Both the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the EU issued repeated rulings finding Poland in breach of judicial independence standards. The European Commission triggered its Article 7 rule-of-law procedure against Poland — only the second time in EU history — and the dispute ultimately led Brussels to freeze roughly €35 billion in EU recovery funds pending a restoration of judicial independence.