EU court upholds a €320m rule-of-law fine issued against Poland under former government

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

An EU court has ruled that the European Commission acted lawfully when it deducted €320 million from Poland’s EU funds as a penalty for Warsaw’s failure to comply with an order to suspend the disciplinary chamber of its Supreme Court, a controversial body established by the former Law and Justice (PiS) government.

The current government, which replaced PiS in office in December 2023, says that it plans to appeal against the ruling, which was made by the EU’s General Court. However, it blames the former administration for the situation.

“Despite the fact that this is entirely the responsibility of Law and Justice, we will appeal against this decision,” said Europe minister Adam Szłapka on Wednesday, quoted by Polsat News. “We want to use every legal possibility to recover the money for Poland.”

The case in question dates back to July 2021, when the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ordered Poland – then ruled by PiS – to suspend the operation of the disciplinary chamber.

The CJEU did so following a request from the European Commission, which argued that “Poland violated EU law because it entrusted the disciplinary chamber, whose independence and impartiality is not guaranteed, with jurisdiction to adjudicate in matters concerning the status of judges”.

However, Poland did not comply with that order, and the disciplinary chamber continued operating. As a result, the CJEU imposed fines of €1 million per day, effective from 3 November 2021. Later, in April 2023, the fines were reduced to €500,000 a day after Poland was deemed to have partially complied.

But the PiS government refused to pay the fines, leading the European Commission to deduct the money from EU funds earmarked for Poland. The deductions ceased in June 2023, after the CJEU issued a final ruling on the case (finding that the disciplinary chamber did indeed infringe European law).

Poland, while still ruled by PiS, launched a legal challenge against six of the commission’s decisions to withhold €320 million in funds between 15 July 2022, when Poland closed down the disciplinary chamber, and 4 June 2023, the day before the CJEU’s final ruling that brought the case to a close.

Poland argued that its legal reforms had met the EU’s demands and requested that the penalties be cancelled or reduced.

The General Court rejected this claim, finding that, “in recovering the amounts payable, the commission did not infringe EU law”.

“Neither the case-law of the Polish Constitutional Court nor the entry into force of the Law of 9 June 2022 [closing down the disciplinary chamber] enable the existence of the debt itself to be challenged,” it added. “Consequently, they were not such as to affect the lawfulness of the set-off decisions.”

The court also ruled that as long as the penalties remained in place, and Poland was refusing to pay them, “the commission was obliged to ensure recovery of that amount in full”.

The ruling is not final and can still be appealed at the CJEU. Szłapka confirmed that the current government plans to do so, but admitted that “the situation will be very difficult”.

During PiS’s eight years in power, it implemented a series of measures overhauling Poland’s justice system that were widely viewed by expert bodies, international organisations and the Polish public to have undermined democracy and the rule of law.

In December 2023, the PiS government was replaced by a new coalition government led by Donald Tusk, who vowed that under him Poland would end its disputes with the EU over the rule of law.

Although he managed to unlock frozen EU funds, his government’s actions have also been mired in legal controversy, including a contested takeover of public media, the replacement of the national prosecutor, the appointment of judges, and efforts to prosecute former PiS ministers.

According to a poll last month, more Poles think the rule of law in Poland has got worse than better in the year since Tusk’s coalition government took power.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Penn State Libraries Pictures Collection/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)

Alicja Ptak

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