EU court tells Poland to pay $1.2M a day in judicial dispute

The European Union’s top court has ordered Poland to pay 1 million euros a day ($1.2 million) over the country's longstanding dispute with the bloc over judicial independence.

The Wednesday ruling by the Court of Justice came after the the EU’s executive commission asked for “financial penalties” to ensure compliance with a ruling from July.

The court said that the penalty was “necessary in order to avoid serious and irreparable harm to the legal order of the European Union and to the values on which that Union is founded, in particular that of the rule of law.”

EU nations have warned for years against what they see as a backsliding of democratic principles in Poland when it comes to an independent judiciary and a free media.

The conflict came to the fore again at the beginning of the month when Poland’s constitutional court ruled that Polish laws have supremacy over those of the European Union in areas where they clash.

The EU argues that the Polish government has stacked the Constitutional Tribunal with handpicked judges.