EU to withhold its regular transfer to Poland

The European Commission notified Poland on Tuesday it would withhold cash that the EU was to pay Warsaw as part of regular EU transfers.

It said the cash was to cover the first part of fines imposed by the EU’s court on Poland which the country did not pay.

This was the first time that the Commission has to withhold EU money for a member country because it was not complying with a ruling by the EU’s top court.

In September, 2021, the Court of Justice of the European Union put a 500,000 euro (571,000 dollars) daily fine on Poland for not stopping the operations of its Turow lignite mine and power plant on the border with Czech Republic.

This followed a complaint from Prague that its operations were endangering water sources of residents across the border.

However, Poland’s Eurosceptic and nationalist government refused to comply with the court ruling.

Commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari in a statement said “the Commission has informed Poland that it would proceed with the offsetting of payments for penalties due under case C-121/21 Czechia v Poland on Turów lignite mine”.

“The offsetting is for penalties covering the period 20/9/2021-19/10/2021.”

An EU official said the amount withheld to cover the fines for that period was around 15 million euros.

Ujvari said, “the Commission will proceed with the offsetting after 10 working days from this notification”.