Press Release: Energy: Commission withdraws Court case against Poland for failing to transpose EU rules

The Renewable Energy Directive (Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources) aims at ensuring a 20% share of renewable energy in the EU by 2020. The Directive had to be transposed by the Member States by 5 December 2010.

The Commission sent a Letter of Formal Notice in January 2011, a Reasoned Opinion in March 2012 and referred the case to the Court of Justice for complete absence of transposition in March 2013. A penalty for non-transposition was originally proposed under Art. 260(3) TFEU, amounting to EUR 133.228,80 per day.

Poland transposed part of the provisions of the Directive during the Court proceedings. Consequently, the Commission narrowed down the scope of the application to the obligations which were still missing and reduced the proposed penalty to EUR 61.380 per day. A hearing before the Court took place on 7 October 2014 and the Advocate-General Wathelet delivered his Opinion on the case on 11 December 2014.

For the sake of consistency, the Commission decided to apply its normal practice – as set out in its Communication on the implementation of Article 260(3) TFEU, which consists in withdrawing pending cases before the Court of Justice where only a daily penalty has been proposed, if the Member State complies with the obligation to transpose the Directive's obligations into national law. In this specific case, Poland notified the full transposition of the Renewable Energy Directive on 29 January 2015.