The General Court of the European Union has dismissed three actions brought by Poland for the annulment of the European Commission’s recovery of unpaid daily penalty payments imposed by the Court of Justice of the EU on that Member State for failure to comply with a November 2019 judgment on the independence and private life of Polish judges (Cases C-585/18, C-624/18 and C-652/18 – see EUROPE 12372/28) in a judgment delivered on Wednesday 5 February (Joined Cases T-830/22, T-156/23 and T-1033/23).
Poland’s former Europhobic government challenged six European Commission decisions to recover daily penalty payments by withholding certain amounts owed to Poland by the EU. Amounts recovered totalled approximately €320.2 million (principal plus interest).
Daily penalty payments of €1 million were imposed at the end of October 2021 by order of the Court of Justice (see EUROPE 12821/1) because Poland had failed to comply with an earlier order of July 2021 requiring it to suspend the application of certain national rules relating to the independence and private life of Polish judges (see EUROPE 12766/3).
The General Court dismissed Poland’s actions in their entirety. In its view, by recovering sums due, the Commission did not infringe the EU’s Financial Regulation (2018/1046). Neither the Polish Constitutional Tribunal’s case law nor the entry into force of a law that halved the daily penalty payment in April 2023 (see EUROPE 13167/13) allow the existence of the debt itself to be challenged.
As for the reduction in the penalty payment’s amount, it only applied going forward. Between October 2021 and April 2023, the European Commission was therefore obliged to recover the debt at a rate of €1 million per day.
When contacted, the Polish authorities indicated that they had already paid the amounts claimed.
The European Commission has a “fairly significant” success rate in its infringement proceedings relating to the Rule of law, noted the commissioner responsible, Michael McGrath. Saying he was open to dialogue with all Member States, he nevertheless felt that respect for the Rule of law could not be achieved ‘à la carte’.
See the General Court’s judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/fdg (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion with Solenn Paulic)