Poland will not close Turów mine, Polish PM Morawiecki says

Poland will not close the Turów lignite mine, located near the border with Czechia, and will do everything to keep it operating until 2044, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, according to Polish media. „We will not let the mine be closed. No court in Brussels is going to tell us what energy security is,“ the prime minister said during a visit to Turów, according to the Polish Radio website. Earlier, Morawiecki rejected a 31 May ruling by the Warsaw administrative court ordering the mine to stop extracting coal, according to the Gazeta.pl news website. Polish Radio noted that Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE), which owns the mine and the adjacent power plant, has already announced that it will appeal the court ruling.

Morawiecki wrote on social media that the government does not accept „lawlessness“—the Warsaw court ruling issued following a complaint by the German town of Zittau, the Czech and German branches of Greenpeace, and the Frank Bold Foundation. „We cannot comply with it and will do everything to overturn this decision,“ Morawiecki added.

According to the government, the mine and adjacent power plant supply eight percent of Poland’s electricity consumption. If the Warsaw ruling were to take effect, coal extraction at the mine would stop after 2026. In February this year, Polish authorities issued a permit allowing mining to continue until 27 April 2044. German and Czech environmental groups oppose continued mining, saying it threatens the environment. The Polish government rejects such objections, arguing that they are untrue, Gazeta.pl reported.

Morawiecki said at the site today, according to Polish Radio, that Turów is too important a mine for the government to allow it to close. „We will do everything to keep the mine operating normally until 2044. The mine’s employees provide electricity for the entire region,“ he said. He also claimed that all it takes is to take control of some political elites to make them serve foreign interests. „We have the Turów mine in Poland, but there are similar ones in Czechia and Germany. And where are those fighting for the environment?“ he asked.

The prime minister also accused the „pro-German“ liberal opposition of intending to close the mine on the basis of a court ruling, while the current government believes it cannot comply with a ruling that disregards the country’s interests in favour of foreign interests. The prime minister considers this lawlessness.

Poland will hold parliamentary elections in the autumn, in which the government of the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) will seek a third consecutive term.

„We are facing an ongoing climate crisis, and Turów, like other ageing coal-fired power plants, should therefore be shut down by 2030 at the latest,” Anna Meresová of Greenpeace said, according to Reuters.

In February 2021, Czechia sued Poland at the Court of Justice of the EU over the expansion of mining at Turów. The court’s Advocate General ruled in favour of the complaint in February last year, saying Poland had breached EU law by failing to assess the mine’s environmental impact. In May 2021, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled that Poland had to stop mining immediately. Poland refused, and in September 2021 the court imposed a fine of half a million euros (more than CZK 12 million) per day. Talks between Prague and Warsaw eventually led to the signing of a Czech-Polish agreement last February. Under the deal, Poland paid Czechia 45 million euros (around CZK 1.06 billion) in compensation for mining-related damage, and Czechia withdrew its lawsuit. Environmental organisations say, however, that the agreement does not protect Czech citizens from losing access to water.