Anna Moskwa announced the NSA’s move via Twitter, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Anna Moskwa. PAP/Andrzej Lange
The climate and environment minister wrote: “The Supreme Administrative Court has sided with our grievances regarding an order by the Regional Administrative Court, which had demanded a halt to the Turów mine. The fight for Turów and energy security continues.”
A spokesman for the NSA, Sylwester Marciniak, told the PAP news agency that the top administrative court cancelled an order issued on May 31 by the Regional Administrative Court in Warsaw to suspend the Turów mine’s environmental licence.
Marciniak added that a complaint against the licence, which allows Turów to mine lignite beyond 2026, was still being processed by the Polish court system.
He confirmed that the top administrative court had sided with the grievances of the government and the National Public Prosecutor's Office, according to officials.
The NSA said the lower court had not considered the consequences of its ruling “for the public interest in the broader sense” and for “the interests of other sides in the case,” the PAP news agency reported.
The NSA "stressed that energy security is a constitutional value because it is one of the guarantees of national independence and the security of citizens,” the spokesman said.
He added that the lower court "ignored the fact that in this case, the investment process precluded the possibility of an effective suspension of the environmental licence.”
'No court will dictate to us': Polish PM
Following the decision by the Regional Administrative Court in Warsaw, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on June 7 that his government "will certainly not allow this mine to be closed."
"We will do everything to ensure that it continues to operate until 2044," he added at the time.
He told reporters: "No court will dictate to us, whether from Brussels or Warsaw, on what energy security means, what it means for the people who work here, the security of their families, financial security. These are fundamental issues for us."
In February, the climate and environment ministry permitted Turów to mine lignite until April 27, 2044, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
'Danger of significant damage to the environment'
On June 6, the Frank Bold Foundation, the environmental organisation Greenpeace and fellow green group Eko-Unia said in a joint statement that the Regional Administrative Court in Warsaw had suspended the Turów mine’s environmental licence due to “the danger of significant damage to the environment,” the PAP news agency reported.
The three NGOs added that “Poland’s Climate and Environment Ministry in February 2023 extended Turów’s lignite mining permit on the basis of this environmental licence."
In late 2022, the Frank Bold Foundation, Greenpeace and Eko-Unia challenged Turów’s environmental permit before the Regional Administrative Court in Warsaw, according to the PAP news agency.
The open-cast Turów lignite mine is located in southwestern Poland, near the Czech border.
The Czech Republic last year withdrew its legal complaint against Poland from the European Court of Justice after Warsaw paid the agreed compensation in a dispute over the Turów mine, according to reports at the time.
The Czech government in 2021 filed for an injunction with the European Court of Justice, saying the Turów mine was draining groundwater away from surrounding areas and harming Czech citizens.
The European Union's top court in September 2021 ruled that Poland must pay a EUR 500,000 daily fine to the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, for defying an earlier order to halt operations at Turów.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP