Nawrocki vetoes onshore wind farm bill, inks his own project
Polish President Karol Nawrocki vetoed the so-called windmill bill, calling the legislation "blackmail", and signed his own proposal for the project on Thursday, disrupting Warsaw's efforts to ease the rules on the construction of onshore wind farms.
Approved this summer by the Sejm and the Senate, the lower and upper houses of parliament, the bill was seen as essential for boosting green power production. It also aimed to extend the deadline for the energy price freeze until the end of 2025, pushing back the original September deadline.
"The wind farm bill, because this is how we should indeed call it, is a form of blackmail by the parliamentary majority and the government," Nawrocki said at the press conference on Thursday. "The bill concerns wind farms, not the reduction of energy prices."
He defended his decision — hardly surprising given the prior veto announcement from the President's Office — by saying that "many people across Poland protested" against the bill, and that Poles do not want wind turbines close to their homes.
Instead of green-lighting the bill, the newly inaugurated president signed his project, which he views as the solution to the power costs freeze issue.
"So, today I also signed a bill, a proposal that is literally taken from the bill that was vetoed," Nawrocki said.
The head of state said that "not a single comma" was changed in the government's proposal of a power rates freeze, and that in September, after both chambers of the parliament vote on the initiative, he will sign it into law.
The now-vetoed bill would have loosened rules on the construction of new wind turbines on land and cut the allowed distance between new turbines and residential buildings by 200 metres. In addition, the legislation would have capped energy costs for households at net PLN 500 (EUR 117) per MWh until the end of 2025 and would have partially lifted the "10H rule," which bans windmill construction at a distance less than 10 times the height of a wind turbine.
"Shortening the distance, abandoning the rule of 10H and cutting the distance to 500 metres is not socially acceptable," Nawrocki said.(PAP)yb/mf
