Barricades, barbed wire, water cannons, police reinforcements from Belgium and an armored personnel carrier in front of the Czech embassy. The Kirchberg district of Luxembourg was preparing for the arrival of Polish trade unionists as early as Thursday. Several hundred Poles went to Luxembourg to protest in front of the seat of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Czech Embassy. The reason for the pressure is the Czech-Polish dispute over the Polish brown coal surface mine Turów. The demonstration was calm in the end.
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Police measures in front of the Czech Embassy building in Luxembourg.
The Czech government sued Warsaw in an EU court in February this year for failing to include Czech comments in assessing the impact of the mine’s expansion on the environment. In addition, the Polish Minister of the Environment this spring allowed the extension of mining until 2044. Czech municipalities near the Polish mine are losing ground due to groundwater extraction and are also suffering from dust and noise from the mine. The owner and operator of Turów is the Polish state company PGE.
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At the end of May, the court granted the Czech request and issued a preliminary injunction ordering Poland to “suspend” mining immediately. The government in Warsaw refused. Therefore, from September 20, Poland will receive a fine of half a million euros per day, in terms of 12.7 million crowns. As of Friday, it is already 16.5 million euros, ie 423 million crowns.
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So far, Warsaw claims that it will not pay the fine. The European Commission has already announced that it will call on Poland to pay a fine to the EU budget in due course. At stake is also the possibility of deducting money from EU funds going to Poland.
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Polish trade unionists from the Solidarity association reject the fine and the suspension of mining in Turów and consider that the EU court has no jurisdiction to decide the case. They tried unsuccessfully to submit a petition to the Luxembourg court, calling the court’s decision an “unprecedented attempt to appropriate competences not provided for in the EU treaties”.
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The unions allegedly came to “close” the EU court. “If they want to lock us up, we are closing the court,” said Wojciech Ilnicki, head of the Turów mine, before the event. Similar rhetoric is used by Polish government politicians. Some even accuse the court of corruption or spread conspiracy theories about an international Czech-German anti-Polish conspiracy. An exception is not the claim that the Czech Republic sued Poland in order to sell Poland its own coal.
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Trade unions from all over Poland came to Luxembourg in defense # Turow. A picket in front of the CJEU seat begins at 10 am. The trade unions intend to present the petition to the representatives of the Tribunal. Then the protest is to be moved to the Czech embassy. pic.twitter.com/qI99qskk9S
– Polska Grupa Energetyczna (@Grupa_PGE) October 22, 2021
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In Luxembourg, protesters fired pyrotechnics and flares in vests with the English inscription “Hands off Turów”. The speakers’ speeches were in the spirit of sharp criticism from the European Union and its institutions. The head of the Solidarity Association, Piotr Duda, made a fiery speech, referring to the judges of the Court of Justice as “idiots” and the “tribunal of injustice”. Vulgarit addressed the EU in more speeches, the Czech Republic and the problems of the municipalities around the mine were not mentioned by the speakers.
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Protest in front of the Czech embassy
In the spring, trade unionists from Turów blocked several border crossings near Hrádek nad Nisou. The Luxembourg protest has been planned by Solidarity since September, when an EU court imposed a fine on Poland. Originally, the unions also mentioned the possibility of blocking the highway. The protesters set out for the demonstration in an organized bus order on Thursday evening.
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Due to pandemic restrictions, a maximum of 2,000 people were allowed to take part in the roughly two-hour protest, and they had to register in advance and prove themselves by covid-19 vaccination or a negative test on the spot. According to police estimates, there were about a thousand participants.
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From the headquarters of the Court of Justice, the protesters moved on foot to a building about a kilometer away from the Czech Embassy in Luxembourg. The police have also introduced preventive security measures around the embassy. The Czech Embassy announced in advance on its website that its building will be closed on Friday for “technical reasons”.
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Police measures in front of the Czech Embassy building in Luxembourg.
“We have been in contact with the Luxembourg Protocol and the police since Monday. We act in accordance with their recommendations. After consulting with the headquarters, we also agreed that part of the police protection could, if necessary, go to the embassy site, “wrote the Czech Ambassador to Luxembourg Vladimír Bärtl. The diplomat praises the action of the Luxembourg police as professional and correct.
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Ambassador Bärtl met with representatives of Polish trade unions in front of the embassy around noon and received the text of their petition from them. The text states that the case arose due to “German interests” and “the interests of Czech oligarchs and some politicians”. The dispute allegedly threatens the importance of the Visegrad Group, which “wants to divide the old member states”.
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The far right also set out
Not only miners but also the far right arrived in Luxembourg. Speakers at the demonstration were Robert Bąkiewicz, who leads the radical nationalist and xenophobic Independence March. The same organization was behind last November 11 march Warsaw, during which extremists clashed violently with the police, dozens of injuries and set fire to an apartment in an apartment building with a rainbow flag in its windows. Shouts about “white Europe” or the participation of the extreme right from Slovakia or Italy are no exception to those marches.
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At Friday’s demonstration, posters of Bąkiewicz’s “Independence March” were displayed with slogans such as Independence is not for sale. It is the participation of radicals that is probably the reason for the extraordinary security measures in the Luxembourg capital. According to the police, the so-called ultras mobilized through social networks.
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Some politicians of the ruling Polish coalition are also taking part in the protest, such as MEP and ex-minister from the radical right-wing Solidarity Poland party Beata Kempová headed to Luxembourg in the morning from Strasbourg. Opposition politicians, on the other hand, earned the title of “cowards and traitors” at the demonstration. The Polish opposition called on the government to comply with the EU court’s decision and criticized it for a series of mistakes and arrogance towards the Czech Republic.
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Prague wants to resume negotiations on the contract
The topic of the Turów mine has caused the worst crisis in Czech-Polish relations in decades. The Polish side began serious negotiations with the Czechs only after the May preliminary injunction issued by the EU court.
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The dispute is to be resolved by an intergovernmental agreement, in which the Poles commit themselves, among other things, to financial compensation. Complicated negotiations stalled in September. The Polish delegation left Prague after failing to demand the possibility of terminating the contract after only two years.
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The leadership of the Liberec Region called on the Czech government to continue negotiations. The Czech Ministry of the Environment said on Wednesday that it had received support for further talks from representatives of the Together and Pirates coalitions with the Mayors and addressed the Polish side.
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“In recent days, we have negotiated with coalition parties. Primarily with the ODS and STAN, so that we can agree with them that they support the continuation of negotiations with Poland, “a spokeswoman for the ministry quoted ČTK as saying. On Thursday, Polish climate minister Michał Kurtyka confirmed that the invitation had arrived from Prague and that the government was now analyzing it.
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The content of the negotiated agreement, which both parties are still officially concealing, is criticized by Czech environmental organizations. They are bothered by the secrecy of details and the fact that the Czech side does not seem to demand a geographical restriction of mining towards the Czech territory.
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