The Polish government has announced that the latest round of negotiations with the Czech Republic have failed to produce an agreement to end a dispute that is costing Poland €500,000 a day in fines until it closes down a coal mine.
Ministers blamed the Czechs for being “irrational” and rejecting a “very good Polish offer”, instead “escalating their demands”. The Czech environment minister has questioned Warsaw’s version of events.
Early this year, Prague took Poland to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) over a coal mine on the Polish side of their shared border that the Czechs said had had its licence renewed without environmental approval.
In May, the CJEU issued an interim order for the mine to be closed. After Poland failed to comply, last month the court imposed daily fines of €500,000 against Warsaw until it shuts down the mine. The Polish government has still not done so, instead seeking further talks with Prague to resolve the dispute.
Yesterday, Polish environment minister Michał Kurtyka announced that the latest discussions had broken down. The Czechs had not accepted “a very good Polish offer” and instead responded with “an escalation of demands”, he said, quoted by TVN24. “The biggest loser is the local community on both sides of the border.”
Deputy foreign minister Paweł Jabłoński added that the Czech side had “begun to behave in an irrational way, out of touch with reality”. He said that they had requested a clause that would make it impossible to ever terminate the deal. “Such solutions are not found in international partnership agreements,” said Jabłoński.
The Czech environment minister, Richard Brabec, however, disputed the Polish version of events. He “questioned” the idea that Prague had escalated its demands, reports Onet. He also said that the clause making the agreement impossible to terminate had been included in the draft from the very beginning of negotiations earlier this year.
Brabec said that he would not comment further, as he did not want to conduct negotiations through the media. But he expressed hope that the two sides “will meet in the coming days and bring this to an end”. Warsaw has said that its most recent offer remains on the table.
On Sunday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki claimed that it could be difficult to reach an agreement before elections in the Czech Republic that will take place on 8 and 9 October. He suggested that it was in the campaign interest of the Czech government to hold back from a deal.
In May, Morawiecki announced that an agreement had been reached. But this was quickly denied by Prague, which in June put forward its request to the CJEU for Poland to face daily fines. Warsaw applied for the interim order to be cancelled completely, but the CJEU rejected that motion.
With Poland so far indicating that it will neither close down the mine – which supplies coal that produces 4-7% of the country’s electricity – nor pay the fines, last week the European Commission warned that it can take the money out of the country’s EU funds.
Main image credit: Geocaching (My keš)/Flickr (under CC BY 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
