Enough is enough: the European Union can no longer stand by while Białowieża Forest is logged — the oldest lowland forest in Europe and a Unesco World Heritage Site — and the EU Court of Justice has ordered Poland to immediately cease the felling of trees. Deforestation began in March 2016 in an attempt to counter, according to Poland, the spread of a bark beetle pest, the European spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus). The EU, fearing that the insect was merely a pretext for the economic exploitation of the trees, decided to oppose the logging plan. In August 2017 it adopted a measure to suspend the deforestation and launched an infringement procedure, but the Polish government ignored it and continued with the felling plan.

The EU fines Poland

This time, however, Warsaw will have to take the new ruling issued by Brussels seriously: the Court of Justice has given Poland fifteen days to demonstrate that it has complied with the court order to halt deforestation, failing which it will have to pay a fine of at least €100,000 per day from the date of notification of the order itself.

Poland makes no comment

The European Commission announced that it had decided to refer the matter of daily fines to the Court of Justice because there were grounds to doubt that Poland had complied with the decision to immediately halt the logging — it is the first time that a member state has failed to implement a ruling of the Court of Justice. Poland has yet to comment on the new ruling.

Why we must save Białowieża

Białowieża Forest, situated on the border between Poland and Belarus, is a unique ecosystem that has remained largely unchanged since the end of the last ice age and is home to rich biodiversity, including the European bison (Bison bonasus) and the oldest trees on the continent.