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The EU Commission has sent Poland notice to pay some £58million in fines for failing to reverse an illegal disciplinary regime for judges, a spokesman said on Thursday, an escalation in a row between Warsaw and the European Union.
Poland has said it will not pay the fine and has criticised the Commission’s actions.
In an apparent tit-for-tat move, Warsaw is also threatening to veto a proposed EU directive on a global corporate tax deal.
The so-called OECD tax deal would seek to introduce a 15 percent minimum corporate tax rate and it is one of the pillars of French President Emmanuel Macron’s agenda for his country’s EU presidency this year.
The French President has been one of the EU’s keenest promulgators of the regulation.
The deal was hailed by Macron as “historic” and a “real step forward for tax justice” and could deliver an annual boost to French public finances of up to €4 billion.
Such a boost to France’s economy would also help the French leader in the run-up to the presidential election in April.
The case against Warsaw is one of many disputes between the EU and Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, which came to power in 2015 and has since faced accusations of eroding democratic freedoms.
Last October the top EU court fined Warsaw for failing to immediately halt the work of the Polish Supreme Court’s Disciplinary Chamber pending a final verdict on the scheme.
Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller told state-run news agency PAP on Thursday the European Commission was interfering in matters that should be reserved for member states and that it had no legal basis for doing so.
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It has blocked Poland’s access to billions of euros of EU stimulus meant to support economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
More funds from the EU’s 1.1 trillion euro shared budget until 2027 are at stake as the bloc gets tougher in denying money to countries that might channel the cash to support policies that undermine liberal democratic principles.
Warsaw says the judicial overhaul was needed to make courts more efficient and rid them of communist influence.
The nationalist PiS party also says it will not bow to what it calls EU blackmail.
The PiS has restricted the rights of women and migrants as well as putting pressure on public and private media, in other examples of its socially conservative policies it says are required to safeguard Poland’s sovereignty.
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