The Czech government will ask the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to begin imposing daily fines of €5 million against Poland for failing to comply with a recent order to close down the Turów brown coal mine.
“The lawsuit should be filed [to the CJEU] in the coming days,” said Czech environment minister Richard Brabec, quoted by the České Noviny news service. He also revealed that the government had appointed him and foreign minister Jakub Kulhánek to negotiate with Warsaw.
Last month, the CJEU ordered Poland to immediately cease operations at the mine, which is located on its side of the border between the two countries. The Polish government rejected the ruling, saying it violated the country’s energy security and describing it as “colonial”.
It subsequently claimed to have reached an agreement with Prague to keep the mine open, but Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš immediately denied this. In his remarks today, Brabec said that the Czechs were still hoping for an intergovernmental agreement with Warsaw to resolve the issue.
They would demand not only financial compensation for costs relating to mitigate the environment damage caused by the coal mine to Czech water supplies – which could amount to €40-50 million – but also detailed information from Poland about such damage and efforts to prevent it.
Such an agreement would be “presented in the coming weeks” and then discussed by the Czech cabinet, said Brabec. In the meantime, Prague would be immediately filing a request to the CJEU for Poland to be fined daily for its continued failure to comply with the order ruling to shut the mine.
The European Commission, which has sided with Prague in the dispute over the mine, has also insisted that Poland must follow the CJEU’s instructions by “immediately stopping mining in the Turów mine”.
"As long as the Czech Republic does not formally withdraw its complaint, the case continues, the CJEU ruling on interim measures remains valid and Poland must comply with it…[by] immediately stopping mining in the Turów mine," says the @EU_Commission https://t.co/WV8CCvcFR2
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 27, 2021
The open-cast mine in question, which is also near to the border with Germany, has long been considered by authorities from neighbouring countries to be a threat to local groundwater supplies.
The Polish climate ministry renewed a licence for state-owned Polish Energy Group (PGE) to mine at the site in March 2020, but the Czech government accused Poland of breaching EU laws by, among other things, failing to carry out an environmental impact assessment.
In February, after receiving the European Commission’s support, Prague filed a case against Poland at the CJEU. It is the first time one EU member state has taken another to court over a breach of environmental laws.
After the ruling was issued in May, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, described it as “disproportionate” and “contrary to the fundamental principles of the functioning of the EU”. He noted that closing the mine, which is responsible for 4-7% of the country’s energy production, would “harm Poland’s energy security”.
The justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, said that “the entry of EU bodies more and more deeply into the field of competence of the Polish authorities smacks of colonial spirit and is unacceptable”. He suggested that the closure of the Turów mine would benefit Germany.
Poland still relies on coal to produce around 70% of its electricity, which is by far the highest proportion in the EU. The government has set a target of reducing this to as little as 11% by 2040, but argues that it needs European financial support to ensure a “just transition”.
Main image credit: Adam Guz / KPRM (under public domain)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
