Yesterday the European Commission once more brought Poland before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)—this time over barriers to access to justice in matters of air-quality protection. In Brussels’ view, Poland has failed to ensure that complaints about exceeding pollution limits can be filed with national courts.
The dispute concerns the air-quality plans that, under the EU Air Quality Directive, must be drawn up by Member States whose pollutant concentrations exceed permissible levels. These documents are supposed to spell out how each country intends to curb emissions of harmful substances.
A string of lawsuits against Poland
According to the European Commission, Poland—under the leadership of Donald Tusk, whom supposedly no one in Europe was meant to outmanoeuvre—has not provided environmental organisations or natural and legal persons with the right to challenge inadequate or non-existent air-quality plans before national courts.
On the same day, the Commission also referred Poland to the CJEU for failing to transpose the EU Drinking Water Directive, which, among other things, updates water-quality standards and requires action to remove potentially hazardous contaminants such as microplastics and endocrine-disrupting substances.