BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s top court has ordered Poland to pay 1 million euros a day ($1.2 billion) over the country's longstanding dispute with the bloc over judicial independence.

The Wednesday ruling by the Court of Justice came after the the EU’s executive commission asked for “financial penalties” to ensure compliance with a ruling from July.

The court said that the penalty was “necessary in order to avoid serious and irreparable harm to the legal order of the European Union and to the values on which that Union is founded, in particular that of the rule of law.”