The European Commission has asked Poland to pay nearly €70 million in fines for ignoring an order to suspend a body deemed to undermine judicial independence, officials said on Thursday.
The EU executive set out the demand in a letter sent on Wednesday to Polish authorities, giving them 45 days to cough up the €69 million sum, said an EU official who declined to be identified in order to give details.
Commission spokespeople confirmed to journalists that the letter had been sent.
"The measures so far adopted by the Polish authorities... (were) deemed as insufficient," said one spokesman, Christian Wigand.
"Following the first call, the commission will be sending regular calls for payments on a monthly basis," he said. "It of course remains for Poland to urgently comply with the court's order."
The European Court of Justice in October imposed a daily €1 million fine on Poland over the matter, kicking in from November 3, 2021.
The penalty was to make Poland respect an earlier ECJ ruling from July, requiring it to immediately suspend the operations of a disciplinary chamber overseeing judges in Poland's supreme court pending an in-depth review of it.
The chamber is a key mechanism in a Polish overhaul of its judicial system that is perceived in the EU as backsliding on European democratic standards, by attacking judges' independence.
The €69 million amount demanded covers an initial period running to January 10, which was a deadline for Warsaw to comply.
If Poland fails to pay the accumulated fines after 60 days, the European Commission may start deducting them from EU funds earmarked for Warsaw.
That would be an unprecedented move. But Warsaw is already refusing to pay daily fines being racked up in an entirely different fight with Brussels.
In that matter, Poland is piling up a daily fine of €500,000 for refusing to close a giant lignite mine.
A commission spokesman, Balazs Ujvari, said the EU executive had already sent three calls to Poland to pay up in that matter and was now moving towards deducting the fines from EU funds.