The European Commission has moved to make Poland pay the first tranche of fines – together totalling €84 million (380 million zloty) – that it has so far accrued for failing to comply with European Court of Justice (ECJ) rulings to close down a disciplinary chamber for judges and suspend activity at a coal mine.
Today, commission spokesperson Christian Wigand confirmed media reports that they had yesterday sent Warsaw a call to pay €69 million in fines over the disciplinary chamber. In October, the ECJ imposed a record-high fine of €1 million a day until the chamber was closed down, but it continues to function.
“After analysing the reply from Poland to a letter from 22 December, the European Commission has concluded that Poland failed to provide evidence that it was implementing the order issued by the Court of Justice,” said Wigand, quoted by Interia.
The Polish government reportedly appealed to the commission to “hold off” on the fines until it has time to implement the ruling. But Wigand said today that the “measures so far adopted by the Polish authorities” have been “deemed as insufficient”. Warsaw now has 45 days to pay.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday this week a separate deadline expired for Poland to pay the first €15 million accumulated as a result of €500,000-per-day fines it has been accruing since September for failing to close the Turów coal mine on its border with the Czech Republic, as ordered by the ECJ in September.
Yesterday, commission spokesperson Balazs Ujvari confirmed that Poland had not met the deadline and that Brussels would therefore be using an “offsetting procedure” to take the money from Polish EU funds.
“What the commission needs to do now is identify a suitable payment against which the compensation can be made,” said Ujvari, quoted by Deutsche Welle. Poland will be given 10 days to respond and, “following that, the commission will deduct the amount concerned from the payment identified”.
Speaking today, Wigand also confirmed that, if Poland does not pay the fine relating to failing to close the disciplinary chamber, “the commission has tools to ensure that payments…are deducted from other EU funds”.
The Polish government has insisted that it will neither close down Turów coal mine nor pay the ECJ’s fines. Instead, it is hoping to negotiate a settlement with the Czech Republic, which brought the case against Poland. The latest round of talks between the two governments took place this week.
“If the European Commission wants – in a manner inconsistent with EU law – to deduct [the fines] from Polish funds, it can do so,” said government spokesman Piotr Müller last week. “For us, the energy security of Poles is most important…[We] can bear the cost [if it] will prevent Polish families from losing electricity.”
Meanwhile, ministers have accepted the need to remove or reform the disciplinary chamber for judges following the ECJ’s ruling, but have argued that pushing through the relevant legislation will take time.
For the Turów and disciplinary chamber cases together, the running total of fines accrued by Poland so far (which includes those issued after the European Commission made its first requests for payment) stands at over €140 million. That figure is rising by €1.5 million a day.
Main image credit: Tabrez Syed on Unsplash
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.
