PRAGUE, June 14 (Xinhua) -- The Czech government has sent a draft proposal to Poland regarding a dispute over a coal mine near the Czech-Polish border, Czech Minister for the Environment Richard Brabec said on Monday.
"We have just sent a draft intergovernmental agreement on Turow to Poland. It contains the conditions that we will want to fulfill in Poland before and after the possible withdrawal of the lawsuit," Brabec said on Twitter.
The minister said the two sides will start negotiations on Thursday and the Czech Republic is "ready to negotiate hard."
Poland and the Czech Republic have been locked in a dispute over the expansion of the Turow Coal Mine, an open-pit brown coal mine in Poland near the Czech border.
In 2019, the Czech Ministry of the Environment issued an opinion, opposing the expansion of Turow over concerns about possible environmental damages.
In February this year, the Czech government filed a lawsuit against Poland at the Court of Justice of the European Union, saying the mine -- to which the Polish government has granted an extension of operations -- was damaging communities.
In May, the court ordered Poland to halt mining at Turow until a final judgement, saying it was taking place without an environmental impact assessment and that it was "sufficiently likely" that continuing exploitation would "have negative effects on the level of groundwater in Czech territory."
Warsaw rejected this order but said it would start talks with the Czech Republic that could lead to the lawsuit's withdrawal. Enditem