ECJ orders Poland to halt Białowieża logging immediately

The European Court of Justice court ruled on Monday that Warsaw would be fined €100,000 for every day it continues logging in the primeval Białowieża forest. “Poland must immediately cease its active forest management operations in the Bialowieża forest, except in exceptional cases where they are strictly necessary to ensure public safety,” the ECJ said in a statement. The court also ordered Poland to send the commission details of all measures that it has adopted in order to comply with the order within 15 days. The ECJ is expected to rule on the substance of the case next year. Warsaw has been brought to court by the European Commission earlier this year. Polish government argued that the logging was necessary to cope with the beetle infestation. Since logging started, timber harvesting has increased threefold in Białowieża, and brings PLN millions in profits to the state-owned company managing Polish forests. The Bialowieża forest, which covers about 1,500 square kilometers of north-eastern Poland and Belarus, is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a part of it forms a national park. It’s one of the few remaining parts of the primeval forest that covered most of Europe for thousands of years.