German environmental challenge to planned Polish deepwater port rejected

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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.

A Polish court has rejected a legal challenge by a German environmental group, Lebensraum Vorpommern, against the decision to grant environmental approval for a deepwater shipping terminal that Poland plans to construct in Świnojuście, near the border with Germany.

The Polish government has celebrated the decision, saying that plans to build the terminal will now move ahead as a “priority” and will help “Poland take an increasing share of the transport market” in the Baltic Sea.

Plans to build the new port, which will be located within a protected nature reserve, have long raised environmental concerns in both Germany and Poland.

In March this year, Lebensraum Vorpommern – backed by the German municipality of Heringsdorf, which sits just across the border from Świnojuście – filed the latest in a series of legal challenges against the plans. The group says the terminal will cause “massive environmental damage”.

It sought to overturn a decision, made in February, to grant final environmental approval for the terminal. A Polish environmental NGO, Zielone Wyspy Świnoujście, also issued a complaint.

However, on Monday, the provincial administrative court in Warsaw rejected those challenges. It found that all proper procedures had been followed by the General Director for Environmental Protection in granting the environmental permit, reports broadcaster RMF.

“To invalidate the decision, there must be an absolutely flagrant violation of the law. The court found no such violation,” said judge Anita Wielopolska. Her ruling can still be appealed.

The judgment was welcomed by deputy infrastructure minister Arkadiusz Marchewka, who celebrated on social media that “we have won in court with a German organisation” and declared that plans to build the terminal, which is “a priority for our government”, would now proceed.

“No one will stop this investment,” said Marchewka. “The port’s new capabilities will significantly increase our competitiveness in the Baltic Sea. The world’s largest container ships will arrive in Świnoujście and, consequently, Poland will take over an increasing share of the transport market in the entire region.”

Last week, Prime Minister Donald Tusk likewise declared that, “regardless of the protests, no one will block this terminal, you can be sure”.

Construction of the deepwater container terminal in Świnoujście is scheduled to be completed by 2029. It is to be built and later operated by a consortium of Qterminals from Qatar and Deme Concessions from Belgium.

The onshore part of the investment is expected to cost around 1.2 billion zloty (€281 million) while the approach channel is estimated at 10 billion zloty and a pier at 2.5 billion zloty.

The new terminal is expected to allow 400-metre-long ships access to the port and will have a target handling capacity of 2 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit – the size of a standard shipping container) per year.

For comparison, all of Poland’s existing ports handled 3.27 million TEU of containers in 2024, up 9.3% from 2023. The port of Gdańsk, the fifth-busiest in Europe, handled 2.2 million TEU.

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: Port Szczecin-Świnoujście

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.