The move was announced by Polish Deputy Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta on Thursday, state news agency PAP reported.
Kaleta said on Twitter: “On the recommendation of the Ministry of Justice, the government yesterday lodged a complaint to the CJEU against the regulation on reducing gas demand adopted in July 2022.”
He added: “In its complaint, Poland states that the regulation had been issued in violation of treaties. It wasn’t adopted according to the unanimity voting rule.”
In early August, the EU adopted “a regulation on a voluntary reduction of natural gas demand by 15% this winter;" the regulation was approved through the written procedure, by a qualified majority, the PAP news agency reported.
According to Kaleta, the use of the qualified majority rule “is of fundamental significance, because for several years, when introducing new energy measures, the EU has been processing legal acts that are often devastating for Poland (such as the Fit for 55 package) in a way that denies the opportunity to use veto power, even though such power expressly follows from the treaties.”
EU seeking 'power to shape energy mix’
Kaleta added that Poland states in its complaint to the CJEU that “the EU is seeking to use the energy crisis to assume full power to shape the energy mix.”
“Yet it is the EU’s climate policy, focused on Russian gas and pursued with the omission of veto power, that is the cause of today’s crisis,” Kaleta said.
EU member states agreed “to reduce their gas demand by 15% compared to their average consumption in the past five years, between 1 August 2022 and 31 March 2023, with measures of their own choice,” the EU said in a statement in August.
The document announced: “To increase the EU’s security of energy supply, the Council today adopted a regulation on a voluntary reduction of natural gas demand by 15% this winter. The regulation foresees the possibility for the Council to trigger a ‘Union alert’ on security of supply, in which case the gas demand reduction would become mandatory.”
EU member states added that “the purpose of the gas demand reduction is to make savings ahead of winter in order to prepare for possible disruptions of gas supplies from Russia that is continuously using energy supplies as a weapon.”
According to background documents published on the European Council’s website, Poland opposed the new regulations “due to serious reservations against the contents of the draft, in particular its faulty basis in legal acts and treaties,” the PAP news agency reported.
Thursday was day 253 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Source: PAP, dorzeczy.pl, consilium.europa.eu