BRUSSELS - European Commission said Tuesday it will take the unprecedented step of tapping into EU funding earmarked for Poland to collect a fine Warsaw racked up for refusing to close a coal mine.
The EU executive has informed Poland of its decision, which will be carried out next week, a commission spokesman, Balazs Ujvari, told AFP. Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller said Warsaw would use “all possible legal means to appeal against this,” Poland’s PAP news agency reported.
The cut will amount to nearly 15 million euros ($17 million) for the period between September 20 and October 19 last year. The total unpaid fine amounts to around 70 million euros including interest, according to an AFP calculation.
The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) hit Poland with the 500,000-euro a day fine last September for refusing to comply with an order to close its Turow mine producing lignite, or brown coal. Poland’s neighbours, the Czech Republic and Germany, had complained of environmental damage the mine caused, affecting groundwater levels and creating dust and noise.
Last week, Poland signed a deal with the Czech Republic to end the dispute over the mine, but that did not erase the CJEU fine, which Warsaw had steadfastly said it would not pay. “From the very beginning, Poland has emphasised that the decisions taken by the CJEU had no legal or factual basis,” Muller said. “They go beyond the EU treaties and violate the treaty guarantees of energy security.”
the EU justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, insisted that the European Commission -- the Brussels executive and guardian of the EU treaties -- must be seen to uphold the decisions of the court.
“If the member state does not pay, it is obvious that we must organise, as we have said from the start, the withholding of funds,” he told AFP.
“If we don’t do this, no one would pay their fines anymore, obviously,” he said.
Ujvari said the levied amount covering the period September 20 to October 19 would be recovered from Poland’s EU funding.