According to the participants, the meeting in Prague at the Turów mine brought a shift
Updates: 09/24/2021 20:25
Released: 24.09.2021, 11:33
Prague – According to the Minister of the Environment Richard Brabec (ANO), today’s meeting of the representatives of Poland and the Czech Republic on the situation around the Polish lignite mine Turów brought a significant shift in some points. Next week, they will discuss the matter with their Polish counterpart. Progress in resolving the Czech-Polish dispute is also confirmed to journalists after talks in Prague by Deputy Polish Foreign Minister Pawel Jabloński. Warning that the situation cannot be considered resolved. However, he believes in an agreement, even though, according to him, the Czechia and Poland evaluate the situation very differently.
According to the Czech Republic, the Turów lignite mine near the Czech-Polish border threatens, among other things, drinking water supplies in Czech municipalities. However, the Polish side refuses to stop mining, despite a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union in May.
After the meeting of the representatives of the Czech Republic, Brabec stated that he perceived a shift in some still controversial points. But he didn’t want to be specific about a possible agreement. “Until everything is agreed, nothing is agreed,” the minister explained. He added that next week, it will not be on Monday, he will negotiate with his Polish counterpart Michal Kurtyka, later professional teams will meet again.
After the meeting, the governor of Liberec, Martin Půta (Mayors for the Liberec Region), who was present at the meeting, was also present at the meeting. “I am glad that even after today’s negotiations, a compromise has approached that will hopefully be acceptable to both parties, which will hopefully be able to approve both governments,” said Půta. The governor of Liberec is convinced that it is necessary to find a mechanism for a long-term solution to the problem, so that the countries do not have to turn to the European Court of Justice for every detail.
According to Deputy Polish Foreign Minister Jabloński, some progress was also monitored at the meeting in Prague. “But it certainly can’t be used to say that the situation has been resolved,” he warned. According to him, the basis for further negotiations should be a provisional agreement, which was concluded in May. Negotiations, he said, will continue next week.
According to the PAP agency, a spokesman for the Polish government, Piotr Müller, said on Thursday that the offer of assistance to the region affected by mining in Turow was in the order of 40 to 50 million euros (1 to 1.25 billion CZK). According to earlier information, according to the Czech parties, the agreement would, among other things, have to pay expenses for the construction of new and strengthening existing sources of drinking water in the Frýdlant and Hrádek regions or for strengthening the water source in the village of Uhelná,
Neither Brabec nor Půta wanted to specify the required amount today. However, according to them, the Polish side received an explanation of what the Czechia requires. “Now it’s not even about the size of the amount, but rather about mutual understanding of how we came to the particle and what it contains,” said the Liberec governor. According to him, the next meeting should take place next week from Wednesday.
The goal according to Půta is that now the limits of noise or dust during mining are not exceeded in others either. According to him, the agreement with Poland should guarantee that all parameters will be monitored as long as the mine is mined. “In order to control groundwater so that it does not continue to decline. In order to control and monitor, for example, the decline in terrain that can be caused by mining activities,” Půta remarked.
According to the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Jakub Kuhánek (ČSSD), ensuring that access to drinking water on the Czech side is not endangered in connection with coal mining at the Turów mine is a certain goal of the negotiations. “Any agreement with Poland must clearly include this, including clear and legally enforceable guarantees from Poland,” the head of Czech diplomacy said in a press release today.
Kulhánek’s predecessor in office Tomáš Petříček (ČSSD) recommends in astonishing that representatives of the European Union have not yet been invited to discuss the Turów mine. “It is not clear why the European Commission was not invited to the negotiating table, or why more open and public calls were not made towards our neighbors requiring respect for European law and the decisions of European courts,” Petříček said in a blog on the server. Aktuálně.cz.
According to the Czech Mine, Turów threatens, among other things, drinking water supplies in Czech municipalities near the Czech-Polish border. On Monday, the Court of Justice of the European Union imposed a fine of half a million euros a day (about 12.7 million CZK) on Poland for disobeying a previous court order to suspend mining in the mine.
According to PAP, Polish Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro said today that the court did not have the right to impose a sanction at this stage of the dispute. Warning of specific provisions of EU regulations, where, according to him, it is literally stated that punishments can be applied only after a verdict has been handed down, which has not yet been handed down. “We are dealing with the misconduct of the Court of Justice of the EU in that it has appropriated powers that are not given to it by the EU treaties,” Ziobro is convinced.