Mott's Blog

The Great Polish Train Wreck of 2015? At this point the Polish Government has apparently made a decision to not notify the Commission on the Green Certificate system. Since there is absolutely no doubt that it does constitute state aid and the Commission has informally signaled that to the Government, it is probably a good time to ask what will happen next. This will be such a disaster that the Government will have to back off its current stance. There is simply no alternative. State aid that is done without notification is unlawful and must be recovered from the recipients.  See CELF case (C-199/06) European Court of Justice, February 12, 2008. .   “ In cases where Member States do not notify the Commission of its plans to grant or alter aid prior to such aid being put into effect, the aid is unlawful in relation to Community law from the time that it is granted.”   Notice From The Commission , “Towards an effective implementation of Commission decisions orderin...

August in Poland. The politicians are doing what they do best... taking a break. During this period of inattention, it might be useful to compare what the Polish legislature  is doing on renewable energy compared to the French legislature in the same situation (albeit less severe in France). The French did not notify Brussels of their wind tariff in their renewable energy law.When the preliminary memo came out that the European Court was getting ready to find the wind tariff to be state aid, everyone was quite attentive to the possible consequences. Unnotified and unapproved state aid is illegal in the European Union .  Legal commentators noted that once the case got back to the national, French court, it " essentially has no choice but to cancel the preferential feed-in tariffs to wind power producers agreed to in 2008, likely resulting in massive refunds for consumers. France can expect down-stream lawsuits from wind power producers as a result of government FIT adjus...