(Reuters) – The European Union’s General Court on Wednesday dismissed complaints by Poland over 320 million euros ($333 million) in fines it had to pay the EU in 2022 and 2023 in a dispute over judicial reforms.
Poland’s government at the time was embroiled in a row with Brussels over judicial reforms that critics said undermined the independence of Polish courts. The dispute had blocked billions of euros in EU funds to Warsaw and also triggered the fines.
In 2021, the EU’s top court ruled that Poland’s system for disciplining judges was incompatible with the bloc’s laws and then imposed a daily fine of 1 million euros for Warsaw’s failure to implement its ruling that the disciplinary chamber for judges be dissolved.
It later halved that daily fine as certain reforms were implemented.
The EU collected the daily fines by offsetting payments due to Poland, a move that Warsaw challenged unsuccessfully at the General Court.
“The General Court dismisses Poland’s actions in their entirety. In recovering the amounts payable, the commission did not infringe EU law,” the court said in its ruling.
Poland can appeal the ruling at the EU Court of Justice.
($1 = 0.9614 euros)
(Reporting by Bart Meijer, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Toby Chopra)
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