Polish court rejects final appeal against permit for medieval-style castle residence in EU-protected forest

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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.

Poland’s top administrative court has rejected a final appeal against the issuing of a building permit for an enormous private residence in the style of a medieval castle that has controversially been built in a protected and sensitive natural area.

Although the project has been engaged in a years-long legal battle, construction has nevertheless continued and the building, which is located in a forest that is part of the European Union’s Natura 2000 network, is virtually complete.

The investor behind the castle – Poznań-based firm DJT – received a building permit in 2015 from the local authorities in Oborniki county, which lies in western Poland, just north of the city of Poznań. In the same year, it also received environmental approval.

The project, however, only came to national attention in 2018, when the media began publishing images of the enormous construction site on a man-made island in a lake located in Noteć Forest, which is home to a number of nature reserves.

That led the General Directorate for Environmental Protection (GDOŚ), Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA) and local prosecutors to launch investigations.

In 2019, environmental approval for the project was revoked after the authorities found that the area covered by construction was larger than previously declared. However, work on building the castle continued.

In 2021, the Chief Inspector of Building Supervision (GINB) invalidated the 2015 decision to grant a building permit for the project. However, the following year, Warsaw’s provincial administrative court overturned the GINB’s decision.

It found that requirements for declaring the permit invalid were not met and that, in any case, the time limit for doing so had already expired, reports broadcaster TVN.

An appeal against that decision was filed by, among others, the GINB. But it has now been rejected by the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA), meaning that the building permit remains valid. The NSA’s ruling is final and cannot be appealed.

“The [provincial administrative] court rightly found that the contested decision does not grossly violate the provisions of the Construction Law,” said NSA judge Małgorzata Miron, quoted by TVN.

However, she also noted that, in its current ruling, the court was assessing only the validity of the building permit. “Any defective implementation and related violations of environmental protection…can and should be – if such circumstances occurred – assessed in separate proceedings,” said the judge.

A lawyer for the investor, Aneta Fornalik, said that the NSA’s decision means the issue of the building permit will now be sent to the governor of the Wielkopolska province in which the project is located. Given the court’s ruling, it is unlikely the governor will now seek to overturn it, says Fornalik.

The lawyer also said that construction of the castle has not yet been formally completed. However, tickets are already being sold for people to visit the area around the castle.

According to previously released information, the building has 14 floors and will contain 46 residential apartments as well as fitness centres, swimming pools, gyms, libraries and a theatre hall.

Separately, an ongoing trial is taking place at the district court in Oborniki of six people, including investors, an architect and local officials, accused of, among other crimes, falsifying documents and endangering the environment, reports the Rzeczpospolita daily.

In 2020, it was reported that one of the authors of the environmental assessment of the castle project was later appointed as a board member of another company founded by the owner of DJT.

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: SZ Archi/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Daniel Tilles

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.