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The EU General Court Wednesday upheld European Commission penalties of €320 million against Poland.
The ruling related to daily fines imposed on Poland over its Supreme Court disciplinary chamber, which allowed judges to be punished for their rulings. The chamber has since been disbanded.
Poland appealed parts of the fine in order to reduce the amount — although the fine has already been paid: The “Commission took this [amount] off against our contributions in 2022 and 2023,” a spokesperson for Poland’s mission to the EU told reporters.
“Yet another confirmation by the European Court of Justice that PiS’s reforms were against the treaty” of the EU, the spokesperson added.
In October 2021, the EU’s highest court began fining Poland, at the time run by the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice party, or PiS, €1 million a day for ignoring an order to suspend its disciplinary chamber.
The fine was halved to €500,000 a day in April 2023 after the court said Polish authorities had made partial — but insufficient — reforms to restore the independence of judges.
The fine stopped when the Court of Justice of the EU issued a ruling on the disciplinary chamber in June 2023, acknowledging it had lost its power.
However, Poland argued that the fine should have been halved earlier, in July 2022, when the amendment abolishing the disciplinary chamber came into force.
Warsaw asked the General Court of the EU to annul a total of six decisions taken between July 2022 and June 2023 — that is, between when the the annulment entered into force and the day before the court’s judgment concluding proceedings.
“In recovering the amounts payable, the Commission did not infringe EU law,” the court wrote in dismissing Poland’s case. Reduction of the daily penalty payment only applied going forward, it continued. “Accordingly, it concerned only the amounts payable from that date.”
