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The Turow opencast mine near the border with Saxony
Photo: DAVID W CERNY/ REUTERS
In an unprecedented process, the EU Commission intends to withhold EU funds earmarked for Poland and thus compensate for outstanding fines.
The country missed the deadline for a payment request from November, a spokesman for the Brussels authority said on Wednesday.
Therefore, it is now being examined from which EU payments to the country the amount in question can be withheld.
The Polish authorities would then be informed and would have ten days to comment.
Then the EU Commission will withhold the money.
It is about a fine of 500,000 euros a day since September 20, which Poland has to pay according to a decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
In total, this is around 60 million euros so far.
Poland does not comply with the request to stop coal mining
The ECJ had already ordered in May 2021 that Poland must suspend lignite mining in the Turow opencast mine on the border with Saxony. Because Poland did not comply with this order, the highest EU court imposed the fine at the request of the neighboring Czech Republic. With a view to this decision, the EU Commission sends the payment requests for a period of one month. According to the authority, there has never been a case in which a member state has not paid penalties imposed by the ECJ. Payments like these go into the EU budget.
Warsaw faces further penalties because it does not implement another ECJ order on Polish judicial reform.
Therefore, since November 3, one million euros have been due every day.
The EU Commission has not yet sent an official request for payment.
However, EU Justice Commissioner Dider Reynders recently announced in the »Financial Times« that a request for payment of 69 million euros could soon be sent to Warsaw.
svs/dpa