“We will take legal and political measures so that the penalties for Turów do not burden Poland,” the Deputy Head of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Paweł Jabłoński said on Friday, referring to the penalties imposed by the CJEU and the agreement reached by Poland and the Czech Republic on the matter. “Already in the coming days, such measures will be taken,” he pointed out.
Polish and Czech Prime Ministers Mateusz Morawiecki and Petr Fiala signed an agreement on the Turow open-pit mine on Thursday. According to the agreement, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Friday, Poland paid 35 million euros in compensation and 10 million euros from the PGE Foundation were also transferred to the Liberec state. The Czech Republic withdrew its complaint against Poland from the CJEU. EU oversight of the agreement is expected to last 5 years.
Jabłoński was asked on Wirtualna Polska’s “WP Newsroom” whether the agreement with the Czech Republic ends the whole matter. “This concludes the matter and gives something that is extremely important from the point of view of our energy security and the operation of the Turów mine and power plant,” he replied.
He referred to the penalties imposed by the CJEU in connection with the mine case. “This is an absolutely unprecedented situation. Never before in the history of the European Union has any country been burdened with such penalties and we will continue to take legal and political measures so that these penalties do not burden Poland,” he said.
“This is a situation that was intended to lead to it, and this was the idea of the Czech side and supported in this regard by the Court of Justice, to resolve this matter in a way that was satisfactory to both sides. Today this matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of both sides and we will take such steps so that Poland does not have to pay these fines” he emphasized.
Asked whether the agreement and the concluded contract are Poland’s success, Jabłoński replied: “It is a failure that the whole situation needn’t have taken place at all. “I don’t want to point the finger at who was at fault because it’s never the case that one side is to blame,” he pointed out.
“If we didn’t finish this case, if it continued and ended with the Court’s verdict, we would have no guarantee that we won’t have further problems, that there will be further attempts to close the Turów mine,” the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs stressed.
As he added, “we are dealing with the conclusion of a bilateral agreement – a cooperation agreement between Poland and the Czech Republic, which introduces a certain stable mechanism for monitoring warnings about various types of potential threats to mine exploration.” “But this mechanism ensures that if any problems arise, the parties will resolve them through a well-defined procedure,” he stipulated.
“In no scenario did we assume that this matter will end costlessly because with the operation of such large mining facilities as the Turów mine there are costs, there are maintenance costs,” the deputy minister said when asked about the costs that Poland will incur. “The alternative, which would be that we close a mine, we take away more or less 5 per cent of the Polish energy mix(…), that would result in much higher costs, and so – unfortunately sometimes you have to incur costs to guarantee energy security,” he added.