Reader, if you don’t like European crises, go your way! Under the influence of Hungarian Viktor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the strongman of Warsaw, the ambassadors of Hungary and Poland have carried out the veto threats wielded for months. The European recovery plan (750 billion euros) and the long-term European budget (2021-2027) are for the moment planted after a meeting of Coreperwhich took place on Monday, November 16, in the early afternoon. Technically, the Hungarian and Polish representatives are preventing the “own resources” decision which allows the Commission to finance the recovery plan like the long-term budget.
The sticking point lies in the mechanism on the “rule of law”, which the EU intended to acquire for the first time. This mechanism (broken down into eight articles) would make it possible to make the payment of European funds conditional on compliance with a certain number of principles arising from the treaties, including the independence of the judiciary, the refusal of arbitrariness, the obstruction of investigations for corruption, etc. The planned procedure was fairly straightforward: the Commission assessed the situation and proposed a measure to the Council, which had to act by qualified majority. Therefore, Poland and Hungary could not have had a blocking minority on their own.
For Budapest as for Warsaw (more particularly targeted for years), this mechanism badly conceals a “political blackmail” against two regimes which, in the name of a certain interpretation of Christian values, confront the liberal and Western doctrine of human values resulting from Article 2 of the EU Treaty. In addition, Hungary recalls that it agreed, in July, at the European Council, for a minimum budget clause which conditions the payment of European funds to their effective use, without political interference. It considers that the addition of a “rule of law” clause is contrary to European law insofar as it circumvents Article 7 which already provides for a sanction mechanism. It would therefore be necessary to rewrite the treaties, which requires unanimity.The case is quite serious insofar as the Hungarian and Polish vetoes block the possibility for the Commission to proceed with the necessary loans on the financial markets in order to fuel the recovery plan and the drawing rights on the States for the European budget . Europe is never stingy with palaver, so today’s veto is far from being the last episode in the financial saga that began in the spring with the Covid-19 crisis …
Remember, originally the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Austria and even Chancellor Merkel did not want to hear about a stimulus package that would be based on a common loan … And, ultimately, everyone came there. So the Polish and Hungarian veto is to be gauged against this precedent. Discussions will continue in the coming days to find an acceptable compromise. We are used to it: the European diplomatic gesture has been working this way from day one!There are several speakers around the table: first, a small group of rich little countries in the North (led by the Netherlands) who are more than tired of subsidizing the latest arrivals, in the East, who trample on the principles of transparency, tolerance, liberal democracy which the communist yoke has deprived them of for so long…; then, former communist dictatorships which, by freeing themselves from Soviet tutelage, aspire to regain full national sovereignty and who perceive the European treaties and their reciprocal constraints as a new leaden on their religious beliefs; in the middle, France and Germany who grumble without really knowing how to mend with each other, while claiming publicly from the camp of the rule of law.
Macron and Merkel will be on the bridge
But we must take into account a last protagonist: the European Parliament, temple of respect for the rule of law, which holds European values as the supreme compass. Three parties make up its majority – the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, the Macronist Liberals of Renew. The Greens are part of it only episodically, but, on the rule of law, they step up to the plate with the other three.To find a compromise on the issue, everyone will have to do their part. The frugal and the European Parliament will be called upon in the coming weeks to temper their ardor. The Poles and the Hungarians, very dependent on European funds, will be subjected to all kinds of economic pressure to encourage them to calm things down. And, in the end, France and Germany will make calls in all directions for find a narrow path to the exit. The President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will observe, worried, this diplomatic ballet by repeating to all to preserve the common good: the post-Covid economic recovery that the so-called Next Generation EU plan is supposed to support.
A final reminder: Poland and Hungary cannot block the functioning of the EU because, when a European budget is rejected, the budget of the previous year is applied until an agreement is reached. On the other hand, the longer the political crisis lasts, the longer it will take for the funds from the recovery plan to be paid to regions and businesses. We should not hope for anything before spring, or even next summer, anyway… Each Member State will be running into debt on its own in the meantime.
The meeting of the 27 EU ambassadors.
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