EU threatens legal action if Polish roadworks resume

(BRUSSELS) - The European Commission threatened Tuesday to resume court action against Poland if it goes ahead with a highway construction project through an environmentally fragile forest.

Polish authorities announced earlier Tuesday that work would resume on August 1 on the bitterly contested Via Baltica highway through a swathe of virgin forest in the northeast Rospuda Valley, near the border with Lithuania.

But the Commission's spokeswoman on environmental affairs, Barbara Helfferich, said the EU executive would not hesitate to return to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to get the road work halted.

"We have a letter ready to be sent to the court to ask for interim measures and they can be applied very quickly," she said, adding that the Commission had not been officially notified that work would indeed start again.

"If they resume, then the Commission would definitely send the letter," she said, but could not provide details about when that might happen.

The area around the Rospuda marshlands is the world's most important breeding ground for the endangered aquatic warbler, as well being home to rare greater spotted eagles, lynx and wolves.

But the planned the so-called Via Baltica corridor is a major roadlink for the Baltic states meant to smooth the way for increasing trade between eastern and western Europe.

To ease traffic near the town of Augustow, Polish transport authorities want to build a bypass road through the Rospuda River valley, considered by the EU to be "a unique wetland system".

With the EU threatening legal action, Poland said it would halt the roadworks until the end of the nesting period for a number of rare bird species, roughly until the end of July.

The Commission then froze its action at the ECJ, Europe's highest court.

Poland has been earmarked EU funds in the 2007-2013 budget for the Via Baltica project, although none have yet been allocated. Warsaw has said it will use its own money to pay for the Rospuda River bypass.