EU rejects Poland’s request to end €1 million daily fines for ignoring ECJ ruling

The European Commission has rejected a request from Poland to stop levying fines of €1 million per day for Warsaw’s failure to implement an order by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) relating to its judiciary. The penalties have so far amounted to €526 million (2.4 billion zloty) since being imposed in November 2021.

Five months ago, the Polish government requested that Brussels stop levying the fines. It argued that it had complied with the ECJ’s interim measure, issued in July 2021, ordering it to suspend the activity of its disciplinary chamber for judges.

Analysts at the time pointed out, however, that the ECJ’s ruling was broader than just closing down the disciplinary chamber and that, in any case, it is not the European Commission but the ECJ itself which decides when the fines should stop.

Today, a European Commission spokesman, Christian Wiegand, confirmed to media outlet RMF FM that they had not accepted Warsaw’s request to end the fines.

“The European Commission has carefully analysed the arguments contained in the letter of 3 November and, as a result of this analysis, the European Commission believes that Poland still has not fully implemented the ECJ ruling,” said Wiegand.

The fines were put on hold while the application was being examined by the commission. But Poland can now expect a deduction from its EU funds of up to €150 million in penalties accumulated over the five months that the application was under consideration.

“This is normal procedure when we receive such requests so that we can analyse the arguments,” said Wiegand.

The Polish authorities were informed of European Commission’s decision last week in a letter sent by Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders, according to RMF. Poland has also lodged a complaint with the ECJ regarding the penalties, but the decision is not likely to come until several months from now.

The original ECJ ruling ordered the disciplinary chamber to be suspended because its “independence may not be guaranteed” and its continued functioning “may cause serious and irreversible damage to the EU legal order”.

However, the chamber continued to function in defiance of the order and so the ECJ began to impose the €1 million daily fines. The European Commission is responsible for enforcing the fines by taking them out of Poland’s EU funds.

The EU’s concerns over the disciplinary system were also part of the reason why Brussels has been withholding further billions of euros in post-pandemic recovery funds from Poland.

Eventually, one year after the original ECJ ruling, Poland did close down the disciplinary chamber, replacing it with a new “chamber of professional responsibility” tasked with holding judges to account.

However, the change did not satisfy Brussels, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saying that “the new law does not guarantee that judges can challenge the status of another judge without risking disciplinary action”.

The Polish government is now seeking to replace the chamber of professional responsibility with another new disciplinary system. However, the relevant legislation was referred by President Andrzej Duda for assessment by the Constitutional Tribunal.

RMF reports today, citing unnamed sources, that the European Commission delayed its decision over Poland’s request to end the fines because it had been hoping that the new legislation would come into force in the meantime.

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.