Polish air traffic control body will not be left without support, says PM
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Friday that the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency (PANSA) will not be left without assistance after its receivables have been seized by Eurocontrol in the US drugmaker Pfizer v. Poland case over payment for COVID-19 vaccines.
Tusk declared that the government would be seeking ways to solve the problem.
PANSA said on Thursday that it had been informed by the Brussels-based European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) that money due to it from fees from airlines had been seized in connection with April's ruling of a Belgian court which had ordered that Poland had to accept the delivery of around 64 million COVID-19 vaccines worth PLN 5.6 billion (EUR 1.3 billion) from Pfizer.
The PAZP could lose airline fees amounting to over 80 percent of its income due to the the court ruling.
The case stems from a 2021 vaccine contract signed between the European Commission and Pfizer on behalf of EU member states. Poland later refused to accept further deliveries, citing the changing course of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and pressure on public finances.
"I have talked with the finance and economy minister, and we will surely not leave the agency without support so that it would not have any problems regarding its functioning," Tusk said, adding that the problem of the legal dispute remained and that the general situation was "quite ugly."
Tusk said that the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government led by Mateusz Morawiecki had ordered vaccines but later decided not to collect them and pay for them.
"We are being sued by Pfizer for billions of zlotys." Tusk said, adding that the first ruling exceeded PLN 5 billion (EUR 1.1 billion) and that "all of us would have to pay."
"The Polish Ministry of Health is preparing an appeal against the verdict," Health Minister Jolanta Sobieranska-Grenda said in Szczecin, north-western Poland, on Friday.
She added that she could not disclose further details due to the ministry's legal strategy.
PANSA ensures the safety of nearly 3,000 aircraft flying over Poland, supervising airspace of more than 334,000 square kilometers. It is the only institution in Poland that trains and employs civilian air traffic controllers. (PAP)
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