Luxembourg (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The European Union’s General Court, on February 5, 2025, dismissed complaints by Poland over 320 million euros in damages it had to pay the European Union in 2022 and 2023 in a disagreement over judicial reforms.
On 1 April 2021, the European Commission launched an action for negligence to meet obligations before the Court of Justice against Poland, pursuing a declaration that particular legislative amendments to the organisation of the judicial system in Poland, assumed in December 2019, violated EU law.
What led to Poland’s €320m penalty by the EU?
In the practice of those proceedings, the Court directed Poland, inter alia, to stop the application of specific national provisions questioned by the EU Commission. Not having executed that interim standard, Poland was requested, on 27 October 2021, to pay the EU Commission a daily fine payment of one million euros. That daily fine payment started to run as of 3 November 2021.
Also, on 9 June 2022, with a view to yielding to the interim standard imposed by the Court of Justice, Poland assumed a Law. 5 On 21 April 2021, the Court of Justice declared that that legislative change allowed, to a considerable degree, that interim measure to be executed. Thus, the daily fine payment amount was lowered to €500,000 per day as of 21 April 2023.
Why did the EU fine Poland over judicial reforms?
According to an official statement of the Court of the Justice of the European Union,
“The General Court dismisses Poland’s actions in their entirety. In recovering the amounts payable, the Commission did not infringe EU law. The General Court notes, in particular, that neither the case law of the Polish Constitutional Court 11 nor the entry into force of the Law of 9 June 2022 enable the existence of the debt itself to be challenged. Consequently, they were not such as to affect the lawfulness of the set-off decisions.”
