The General Court of the European Union ruled that Poland had to pay the EU budget the daily penalty imposed by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the Turów open-cast mine case, in a judgment handed down on Wednesday 29 May (cases T-200/22 and T-314/22).
In Poland’s view, it was not obliged to pay the daily penalty payments that the CJEU had imposed on it in September 2021 (see EUROPE 12794/1) because Warsaw had not complied with a previous Court order requiring it to stop extracting lignite from the Turów mine.
In February 2021, the Czech Republic brought an action against Poland before the CJEU, claiming that the extension and continuation of the mine’s activities infringed EU law. According to the Polish authorities, the settlement agreement reached with Prague in February 2022, which led to the case being removed from the Court’s register, had retroactive effect on the penalty payment imposed. In the absence of penalty payments, the European Commission recovered €68.5 million between September 2021 and February 2022 by offsetting the debt against amounts owed to Poland by the EU (see EUROPE 12886/19).
In its judgment, the General Court dismissed the actions brought by Poland. In its view, the removal of the case does not relieve Poland of its obligation to settle the amount owed under the penalty payment. Otherwise, the purpose of the periodic penalty payment, namely to ensure the effective application of EU law, which is inherent in the value of the rule of law, would not be achieved.
In addition, the General Court considers that the Commission complied with its obligation to state the reasons for its five contested decisions on the recovery of the Polish debt, since their content enabled Poland to identify the claims offset and to know the reasons why the Commission pursued the procedure for recovery by offsetting.
See the General Court’s judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/cf6 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)