Nawrocki Launches Push to Rewrite Poland’s Constitution and Expand Presidential Powers by 2030

Polish President Karol Nawrocki has launched a council to draft a new constitution by 2030, with the goal of expanding presidential powers and making the presidency the effective centre of state authority — but the constitutional majority he needs to do it does not exist.

On May 3, the 235th anniversary of Poland’s historic 1791 Constitution, Nawrocki formally appointed the first members of the new Council for a New Constitution at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, as the official presidential website confirmed. “We are beginning work on a constitution of the new generation for 2030,” he declared. He wants the project completed before his first term ends so that if he wins re-election, he does so with a fundamentally different set of powers.

The Problem With the Current Constitution

Poland’s 1997 constitution gives the president limited but meaningful powers — enough to block government decisions, veto legislation, and contest appointments, but not enough to govern outright. This works relatively smoothly when the president and prime minister are political allies. When they are not, it produces the kind of sustained institutional deadlock Poland has been living through since Donald Tusk formed his government in December 2023.

Since then, Nawrocki – closely associated with the opposition Law and Justice party – has blocked ambassador appointments, including to Ukraine; refused to administer oaths to newly appointed Constitutional Tribunal judges; and vetoed government legislation. “Poland today is in a constitutional moment. I respect the 1997 constitution and thank its authors. But today we need a constitution of a new generation,” he said in his address at Castle Square in Warsaw. As European Pravda analysts Stanislav Zhelikhovsky and Yurii Panchenko note, what Nawrocki is really proposing is to resolve the ambiguity by placing the presidency at the centre of executive power — ending the current system in which the president is, in their words, “an accelerator in good times and a brake in bad ones”.

A Council That Has Already Caused a Storm

The composition of the newly appointed council drew immediate criticism. Its members include former Constitutional Tribunal president Julia Przyłębska — whose tenure became a symbol of the judiciary’s politicisation under PiS rule — as well as former PiS MEP Ryszard Legutko and former Sejm Speaker Józef Zych. As Rzeczpospolita noted, analyst Artur Bartkiewicz described the “constitutional moment” Nawrocki invokes as being “like Schrödinger’s cat — it both exists and doesn’t”.

The governing coalition’s reaction was blunt. Prime Minister Tusk suggested Nawrocki should “start by respecting the current constitution.” Left party MP Tomasz Trela announced his party would “never participate in this Karol circus”. Coalition senator Grzegorz Schetyna called the council a vehicle for building Nawrocki’s personal political base rather than a serious constitutional exercise.

Why It Is Unlikely to Succeed — For Now

The fundamental obstacle is arithmetic. Changing the constitution requires a constitutional majority in the Sejm. Neither camp currently has one, and a compromise between Tusk’s coalition and the opposition PiS — the only combination that would produce such a majority — looks highly unlikely before the 2027 parliamentary elections.

But the initiative is not without consequences. By raising constitutional reform at the presidential level, Nawrocki has pushed it into mainstream political debate. And as European Pravda’s analysts warn, the version of reform that eventually emerges may look nothing like what he intended. If PiS wins the 2027 elections and finds itself in government, it may have little appetite for handing expanded powers to whoever occupies the presidency next. The longer the current crisis continues, the more likely it becomes that the debate ends not with a stronger presidency but with a weaker one.