The national authoritarian government ignores two judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU – and also its order to transfer fines to the Union budget for each day of default.
The lignite mining in Turów continues to be busily mined, the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court continues to remove disapproving judges from their office: Even after months, Poland’s national authoritarian government is still ignoring two rulings by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), although these are garnished with hefty fines. The one of September 20 last year imposed a fine of 500,000 euros on Poland for every day on which it does not close the mine in Turów in southwestern Poland, which, according to a legal dispute with the Czech Republic, is digging up the groundwater in several border communities. Five weeks later there was an even more severe ruffle for Poland from Luxembourg: for every day on which the disciplinary body, which according to the findings of the ECJ continues to operate in violation of EU law, Poland has to pay one million euros into the EU budget.
Since then, nothing has happened, with the exception of correspondence between Brussels and Warsaw. After both rulings, the Polish government immediately declared that it did not want to respect them. In mid-December, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, a hardliner in the already very reactionary government team, went one step further and declared that Poland would also withhold its EU membership fees in the dispute with Brussels over the harmonization of its judiciary.