Poland is ploughing ahead with a motorway through the Rospuda River Valley. Critics were ultimately ignored, and now the European Commission is warning that it will resume court action to stop the roadwork, which has been suspended.

A spokesman in Brussels explained: “What we did find was a beautiful area with many protected and rare species of which all experts agree that this is an area you should not touch, because it is totally unique in the whole of Europe. What we ask the Polish authorities to do is to choose another route for the highway; not to begin the construction on the highway and certainly not on August 1st as they had announced.”

The Rospuda area has the world’s only population of aquatic warblers, as well as rare greater spotted eagles, lynx and wolves. The national roads office says the work it has planned for this part of the Via Baltica is the least damaging option.

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