Ten months. It is the time that the European Parliament has given to the European Commission, the Guardian of the Treaties, to do their work and protect the interests of Community taxpayers. Hungary and Poland have committed flagrant violations of the rule of law and should be punished, create the Eurocámara, and the Commission is skipping the law by not taking action. The Heads of State and Government asked patience, the Commission has the hands tied by a pact at the highest level, but the MEPs have chosen to take the issue to the courts, resulting an almost unsustainable situation.
The question is delicate and complicated. In the summer of 2020 the leaders of the 27 paid a recovery fund of up to 800,000 million euros to deal with the consequences of the pandemic. But at a five-day Marathon Summit also unlocked the multi-year financial framework 2021-2027, the EU budget, which due to its complexity is not negotiated annually, but every six courses. If it is very difficult this time it was worse, by the Covid and because it was introduced into the package a new element that has long aspirable: a mechanism of conditionality for the fulfillment of the rule of law.
The defensive Arsenal of the EU is limited to internal rules of rules. There is the nuclear button, Article 7 of the treaties that, ultimately, deprive a country in the Council of vote, something very serious. The Commission was invoked in 2019 before the reiterated attempts of the Warsaw Government to charge the independence of the judicial system, and it was activated, otherwise, with Hungary through a complaint of the Eurocámara. But as unanimously requires, and both countries are protected, there is no tour. The EU wanted more resources and was endowed by that mechanism, which, in a summary, allows the Commission to close the tap and leave without tens of billions of euros of the budget to those who do not respect the common rules and values.
The problem was the way to achieve the agreement. Poland and Hungary could not veto that mechanism, since it did not require unanimity in the Council, but a qualified majority. But what they could do was block the start-up of the entire recovery fund, leaving at 27 without joint debt emissions to finance economic reactivation without accumulating debt and deficit in the already touched national public accounts. Everything was standing for months and the fund was in real danger. In the end, in December 2020, Warsaw and Budapest yielded, but not free. On the one hand, they reduced the letter of the mechanism to make it less powerful. But in addition, they reached an agreement with the rest of the leaders, and the Commission, so that this conditionality mechanism was not activated immediately.
The Covenant is that Hungary and Poland would resort to the EU Court of Justice (ironically, of which they say that it has no primacy on national constitutions) denouncing what they consider illegal. And the Commission undertook not to move a file until there was a sentence. The view of the case took place in Luxembourg last week, but there is no date for the result. The 27 were satisfied with the APPARE, but the Eurocamera does not. It has been warning and threatening months and on Wednesday, on the eve of a European summit and after the challenge of Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (who was in Strasbourg before the Plenary), they have acted.
President David Sassoli has asked the Legal Services from the European Parliament to prepare a lawsuit against the Commission for the non-application of the Conditionality Regulation. The letter to the lawyers arrives after a vote in the Committee on Legal Affairs of Parliament that recommended carrying the case before the Tjue. Most of the leaders of political groups, the so-called Conference of Presidents, have supported this action today. "The EU Member States violate the Rule of Law should not receive EU funds. Last year, Parliament fought With all its forces by a mechanism that guarantees it, however, until now the European Commission has been reluctant to use it. The European Union is a community built on the principles of democracy and the rule of law. If they are threatened. In a Member State, the EU must act to protect them. That is why I have asked our legal services to prepare a lawsuit against the Commission to ensure that EU standards apply correctly, "said Italian.
High Community sources explain that they tried to avoid this way, but that Parliament is free. "If you ask me, they have the right but our interpretation of the December Agreement is different and I am sure that we are legally in solid terrain. The problem is of political cut and discussion that can be generated, printing in citizenship and the Institutions What we want is to have a good instrument, a very solid one, bulletproof, and that when it is activated there are no doubts that any kind. The decision of the Tjue will contribute that security, "explains the sources consulted.
The process, legally, it will be slow, but adds more firewood on the eve of the European Council in which the Polish Prime Minister will defend, before his colleagues and in person, the decision of the Constitution of his country (a court that the EU does not recognize as Independent) to consider part of the treaties (articles 1 and 19) irreconcilable with its constitution and question the primacy of Community law on the national. And it occurs while the European Commission has blocked the Polish recovery plan, 36,000 million euros, considering that there are too many doubts precisely about legal certainty. Bigger for a fire that threatens to intoxicate the entire EU and that it could trigger actions of "procedural guerrilla", the words of an veteran official. A surgical boycott on the day-to-day of the EU. The same thing that Hungary has been doing in foreign policy, but perhaps in other areas of more emergency. Starting, as you will see this Thursday and Friday, by the green transition, the decarbonization and the so-called FITX55, the Community Plan for Climate Neutrality.
Date Of Update: 20 October 2021, 21:00
