ENERGO: EU’s top court slaps Poland with €500,000 daily fine for continued lignite mining on Czech border

Poland will have to pay a fine of €500,000 a day for not suspending the extraction of lignite at the Turow mine, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said on September 20.

The mine is at the centre of a dispute between Poland and the Czech Republic. Czechia sued Poland in the CJEU in February over the extension of the mine’s operations, with the court issuing an interim measure in May, telling Poland to halt the mine’s operations immediately.

Poland has not complied and said in reaction to the CJEU’s order that it will keep operating the mine, which sits right on the border with Czechia. Turow feeds lignite to a nearby power plant, which supplies up to 7% of the country’s electricity, and to stop the extraction would threaten Poland’s energy security, Warsaw said.

“No decisions of the CJEU may infringe upon the areas related to the basic security of the member states. Energy security is precisely one such area,” the Polish government said in a statement.

The Czechs are disputing the extension of the mine’s environmental permit, which they claim Poland granted the mine’s operator, the state-controlled power company PGE, without looking into the potential impact on the environment. 

That was a breach of the EU’s environmental impact assessment directive, the Czechs have argued. The CJEU sided with the claim.

The mine’s impact is considerable, Prague charges. The mine is allegedly lowering the water table on the Czech side, a typical effect of open-cast mines.

Warsaw proposed to remediate the mine’s impact following a negotiated agreement between the two countries but the talks are apparently stalled with no solution in sight.

The fine “undermines the ongoing process of a friendly settlement,” the Polish government said.

Poland derives 70% of its electricity from burning coal and lignite and a rushed closing of Turow could bring about a severe disturbance to the security of electricity supply.

According to critics, the dispute about Turow highlights Poland’s being a laggard in reducing the importance of coal in its energy mix. Warsaw only plans an incremental reduction in coal’s share in the energy mix to 11-28% by 2040 thanks to the development of offshore wind, nuclear power and through replacing coal-fired assets with gas-fired ones.

Poland has had 17 years to make bolder decisions about its power sector, critics say, pointing to the country’s accession to the EU in 2004 and the resulting subscription to the bloc’s climate, energy, and environmental policies.