The Unfinished Turów Crisis: Political geographical Analysis of the German Polish Dispute

The dispute over the Turów lignite mine, located in Poland near the borders with Czechia and Germany, illustrates the complex interplay of environmental concerns, cross-border governance, and multilevel politics in Central Europe. While the Czech-Polish controversy was concluded in 2022 through a bilateral agreement, German actors, particularly the city of Zittau, NGOs, and regional politicians, continue to oppose the mine's expansion, arguing that it threatens groundwater, air quality, and local stability on German territory. This paper investigates the German-Polish dispute, compares it with the Czech-Polish case, and identifies the strategies, actors, and institutions shaping its course. The research combines desk analysis of academic and policy sources, cross-border statistics, and legal documents with qualitative insights from interviews and conference speeches conducted between 2022 and 2023. Findings reveal that, unlike the Czech case, the German-Polish dispute lacks robust state-level involvement, leaving local governments and NGOs to spearhead legal complaints to the European Commission and Polish courts. Despite active securitisation discourse and international NGO support, German efforts face obstacles due to Poland's pro-mining stance, weak multilevel governance in Central Eastern Europe, and divergent energy transition strategies. The analysis demonstrates that the Turów case is an environmental and resource conflict and a positional border dispute, highlighting the limits of EU conflict resolution mechanisms. It underscores the imbalance between national and local actors and the persistence of peripheral asymmetries in the Three-Border Region.