Warsaw accuses Germany of illegally dumping tons of rubbish in Poland

Falsified paperwork was used to transport and dump 35,000 tonnes of rubbish from Germany to Poland, Poland's deputy chief inspector of environmental protection has said.

On Wednesday, the European Commission held a hearing in Brussels in connection with Poland's complaint against Germany regarding the storage of illegal waste.

Magda Gosk, speaking at a press conference before the hearing, said that "the most common way of illegally transporting waste is to transport it under the cover of documents that indicate that it is a legal transport.

"In this case, waste of municipal origin - rubbish - was imported under the cover of so-called green waste, i.e. raw materials for recycling, which can be moved between EU countries," Gosk added.

"It was a falsification of documents, (which were - PAP) absolutely inconsistent with the facts; declaring transports as raw materials, when in fact they were transporting rubbish," she continued. "Such rubbish is usually transported to remote, uninhabited places, to temporarily rented warehouses, barns, or quite simply fields where it is dumped."

Poland is demanding that Germany removes the illegally dumped garbage from its territory.