Przedawnienie kar pieniężnych za naruszenie warunków korzystania ze środowiska lub zasad prowadzenia działalności w zakresie jego ochrony
The statute of limitations on fines for breach of the conditions of use of the environment or the rules of conducting activities in the field of environmental protection

Summary/Abstract: The basis of environmental protection is the principle of “the polluter pays,” which is anchoredin the provisions of Article 7 of the Act of April 27, 2001 Environmental Protection Law. However,the rule is not unlimited in nature. This is because its enforcement in practice must becarried out in compliance with rules that guarantee the entities using the environment the opportunityto defend their rights and present their arguments. At the same time, this must take placein a manner that guarantees the security of legal transactions. Therefore, by the Act of April 7,2017 amending the Act – the Code of Administrative Procedure and certain other acts, Article189g of the Code of Administrative Procedure was introduced, defining the general principlesof the statute of limitations for fines. Unfortunately, the necessity to adjust to them the statute oflimitations rules for fines arising from the legal acts under which fines are imposed was forgotten.As a result of this, there is a whole series of solutions in special laws that set out fully orpartially autonomous rules for the statute of limitations on fines. This problem is with particularintensity in the field of environmental protection. Therefore, the study presents the basis forthe statute of limitations of the various types of fines imposed for violations of the conditionsfor using the environment or conducting activities related to environmental protection, andthe resulting problems. Therefore, de lege ferenda, it was proposed to take measures to unify thelegal basis for the statute of limitations of the type of fines in question. This could be done byeliminating from the legal acts constituting the basis for imposing fines the reference to theapplication of the relevant provisions of the Tax Ordinance. Since the introduction of solutionsdedicated to the imposition of fines into the Code of Administrative Procedure, it has becomeredundant.

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