Why Orbán is saving a Polish opposition figure and what consequences this could have
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is not rescuing Polish politicians from imprisonment for the first time. He has offered shelter to several figures from Poland’s former ruling elite.
He granted refuge to the controversial former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, who for nearly a decade was a central architect of Poland’s judicial overhaul.
The decision for Orbán is an opportunity to curry favour with the Polish opposition in hopes that it will one day return to power and remember this gesture.
For Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Karol Nawrocki, however, the case has become a political test.
Read more about why the case of Zbigniew Ziobro is about much more than one man in the article by political scientist and international affairs expert Stanislav Zhelikhovsky: A guest of Orbán: how Hungary became a haven for wanted politicians from Poland.
On 7 November, the Polish Sejm (lower house of parliament) voted to approve the detention and arrest of Zbigniew Ziobro.
Earlier, the Sejm had lifted the former justice minister’s parliamentary immunity, voting separately on each of the 26 charges brought against him by the National Prosecutor’s Office.
These 26 charges form the core of the case.
According to investigators, funds from the Justice Fund were distributed not based on need, such as supporting victims and witnesses of crimes or helping those reintegrating after imprisonment, but along political lines. Selected organisations allegedly received money in exchange for loyalty, while officials were given top-down orders on how to act.
An important aspect of the case is that it involves a whole network of people connected to Ziobro, including former deputy ministers Marcin Romanowski and Michał Woś.
Notably, Romanowski is currently hiding in Hungary, the same country where, according to reports, Ziobro himself is now staying. On 30 October, he even met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
After the Sejm’s vote, Ziobro declared that he would "not be silenced" and vowed to take both legal and political action against the Polish authorities.
He denied allegations that he had "fled the country," insisting he had been in Hungary beforehand and openly, while calling the removal of his immunity a politically motivated act of discreditation.
The former minister also accused Prime Minister Tusk of politicising the justice system.
The Ziobro case is not merely about a single politician. It touches on the very foundation of how the former government, led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, built and exercised power.
Ziobro was far from an ordinary minister: he became the face and author of the judicial reform project that redefined Poland’s legal system.
Therefore, the charges against him are seen within PiS not as a legal matter, but as an attack on the essence of their political project.
For Donald Tusk’s current government, the case represents a chance to demonstrate the restoration of judicial independence and a clear break from the period when the prosecutor’s office was politically subordinated.
For the president, however, it poses a risk of weakening support among conservative voters.
Thus, a struggle is emerging over how the process will be interpreted: is it a restoration of the rule of law or a case of political persecution targeting key figures of the former administration?