WARSAW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th October, 2022) The Constitutional Tribunal of Poland has started considering the legality of fines imposed by the EU Court of Justice on Warsaw, Polish news agency PAP reported on Wednesday.
Consideration of this case was initiated in November last year by Polish Prosecutor General and Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro.
The Constitutional Tribunal has several times postponed the consideration of this case. On September 14, the hearing was postponed at the request of the Polish Foreign Ministry.
The EU Court of Justice imposed two fines on Poland totaling more than 115 million Euros ($112.4 million).
First, in September 2021, when the EU court ruled that Poland should pay 500,000 euros every day until the Turow coal mine stops operating. The decision came after the Czech Republic filed a complaint in May of that year over the coal mine, saying that the mining works affect the quality of water in Czech regions across the border from the mine. Later, the governments of the Czech Republic and Poland signed a compromise agreement, and on February 4, Prague withdrew its complaint against Warsaw from the EU court.
However, the European Commission said that the amount of the fines imposed on Poland would be deducted from the financing of Warsaw by the EU. The amount was estimated to be about 15 million euros.
The second fine was imposed on Poland after its refusal to abolish a disciplinary chamber of judges, which the EU considered a threat to the independence of the Polish judiciary. The EU court obliged Warsaw to pay one million euros per day in October 2021. In November 2021, the European Commission decided to freeze 100 million euros in EU funding for Poland. Warsaw eventually adopted amendments to the law "On the Supreme Court" and terminated the work of the disciplinary chamber.
