EU budget blocked by Hungary and Poland over rule of law

[JustJohn or JJ]

EU budget blocked by Hungary and Poland over rule of law issue
Published 19 hours ago

European heads of States and government attend the round table of a two-days face-to-face European Council summit, in Brussels, Belgium, 15 October 2020image copyrightEPA

Hungary and Poland have blocked approval of the EU's budget over a clause that ties funding with adherence to the rule of law in the bloc.

The package includes €750bn (£673bn; $888bn) for a Covid recovery fund.

Ambassadors of the 27 member states meeting in Brussels were unable to endorse the budget because the two countries vetoed it.

Hungary and Poland have been criticised for violating democratic standards enshrined in the EU's founding treaty.

The EU is currently investigating both countries for undermining the independence of courts, media and non-governmental organisations. The clause threatens to cost them billions of euros in EU funding.

EU states had already agreed on the €1.1tn budget for 2021-2027, and the coronavirus stimulus package after a marathon four-day summit in July.
www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54964858

[kaima]

What does ‘rule of law’ mean?


As the term is popularly used, “rule of law” refers to a sense that the nation is governed by a set of laws that people understand, that work, that are fundamentally fair, and that people believe can and should be followed. The idea that the United States should be ruled by a “government of laws and not of men,” in John Adams’ formulation, lies at the heart of the nation’s constitutional tradition.12 This concept, which traces originally to Aristotle, was first popularly called the rule of law by the 19th-century English law professor A.V. Dicey. As explained by more modern legal scholars, a system that adheres to the rule of law must, at a minimum, be:

Prospective: Punishment or other legal consequences must follow from a properly and previously enacted law; ex post facto punishments for conduct predating the law are forbidden.
Public: Laws are created through a regular public process, and the public knows what the laws are and can conform their conduct to them; adjudication of alleged violations also are made in public, not completed before a special or partial tribunal.
General: No one is, by virtue of wealth or political position, above the law or subject to a different law.
Stable: Changes in law, particularly in the courts, develop over time by a system of precedent, not arbitrary departures.13
Richer definitions of the rule of law additionally incorporate concepts pertaining to “fundamental rights, democracy, and/or criteria of justice or right.”14

It is important to distinguish between the rule of law, which is a normative ideal that incorporates values such as fundamental fairness, equality, and decency, and “law and order,” which is an enforcement-heavy vision of social control that is generally used as a racially coded dog whistle. As law professor Michael C. Dorf puts it, when President Donald Trump calls himself “the law-and-order candidate,” what he really means is that he “will use the law to impose order on ‘them’ (undocumented immigrants, African Americans protesting racially biased policing, Muslims) in order to protect ‘us’ (white Americans).”15 That is the polar opposite of what this report is proposing when it discusses restoring the rule of law in the immigration system and reclaiming the rule of law narrative from restrictionists who have misappropriated it to serve their anti-immigrant agenda.16

< Congress has failed for decades to update the US immigration law, defaulting to the crisis we have faced the last years. > The United States’ immigration system has long fallen far short of rule of law principles. Policies have been adopted that violate the letter and spirit of the law, often without opportunity for public scrutiny or comment, and frequently visiting serious legal consequences on immigrants as a result of conduct that long predated the reversal of course ushered in by the new guard.

We deserve better. We are not likely to get it.

Kai

PS Most of the above was copied from
www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/reports/2019/07/22/472378/restoring-rule-law-fair-humane-workable-immigration-system/

[karl]

J.J. Kai

Interesting as above presented, but not entirely of the entire situation between Hungary and Poland respective Governments. The situation is not so much of a question of Rule of Law which also plays an important element, but the body of issues is financial as described in the following.

sputniknews.com/europe/202011181081204408-hungary-poland-antagonize-brussels-by-vetoing-covid-19-stimulus-over-rule-of-law-clause/

BRUSSELS, (Sputnik), Luc Rivet - The European Union has once again found itself at odds with its Eastern European members, Hungary and Poland, which earlier in the week hindered the bloc's COVID-19 recovery package in response to the EU linking the funds to the respect for rule of law.

On Monday, Warsaw and Budapest envoys declined to support the recovery fund of about 750 billion euros ($891 billion), as well as the multiannual budget for 2021-2027, at an EU ambassador meeting over a mechanism that restricts access to the money if a country's government violates certain rule of law criteria.

The two countries have warned on several occasions that they would refuse the package because of what they consider to be a political decision by Brussels, said to be aimed at punishing Hungary and Poland for their judicial reforms, as well as and to a lesser extent, for Budapest's refusal to accept foreign refugees and Warsaw's tightened control over state media.

According to Michel Liegeois, a political scientist at the ECLouvain university, the rule of law concerns have merit when it comes to special authority awarded to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban by the parliament in order to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The devil is in the detail. It is therefore important to take an interest in their scope (broad or narrow, specific or general); their duration and the control mechanisms. On each of these aspects, the special powers in Hungarian fashion raise real concerns if we compare them with those taken in France or Belgium," Liegeois told Sputnik.
At the same time, it is important to not lose sight of the dispute's political dimension.


Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic Face Fines for Rejecting 2015 Migrant Quotas

"The Left in the European Parliament wants to politically kill Viktor Orban in Hungary and the conservative majority in Poland. The charge was led by Frans Timmermans, the socialist Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, who was responsible for the ‘Rule of Law’ procedure in the last Commission ... Timmermans’ group in the European Parliament, the S&D (Socialists) but also the hard Left, the Greens, the Liberals of Renew are on the attack and made the allocation of European funds conditional to legal changes in Poland and Hungary," an anonymous Belgian civil servant involved in the negotiations told Sputnik, adding that this could divide the EU and push countries to take a page from the United Kingdom's book and leave the bloc.

Hungary and Poland Say No

The Committee of Permanent Representatives II (COREPER II), consisting of ambassadors of the 27 member states to the EU, gathered on Monday in Brussels with the hope of giving the green light to the provisional agreement on the Multiannual financial framework for 2021-2027, and on the other hand to the COVID-19 package.

The latter legally allows the European executive Ursula von der Leyen to borrow 750 billion euros on the capital markets to fuel the vast post-coronavirus recovery plan, called Next Generation EU. The text makes it possible to raise, temporarily in part, the ceilings of its own resources — what the Union may require from the Member States to fund its budget, as a percentage of the gross national income — to cover all the EU's reimbursement commitments.

The decision on its own resources must, after formal adoption by the European Council, be ratified by the parliaments of the 27 member states, meaning the decision is very urgent.

However, Hungary and Poland followed through on their threats, blocking the process from continuing. If the budgetary framework is not adopted on time, this will have very concrete consequences on the financing of the various programs starting in January.

In line with the position communicated during the EU summit in July and in accordance with the veto power laid out in the EU treaties, the Hungarian government exercised its veto over the EU's budgetary legislative package.

"In Brussels today, they only view countries which let migrants in as those governed by the rule of law. Those who protect their borders cannot qualify as countries where rule of law prevails. Once this proposal gets adopted, there will be no more obstacles to tying member states' share of common funds to supporting migration and use financial means to blackmail countries which oppose migration," Orban said in a Wednesday statement.
Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro offered a similar reaction.

"It is really an institutional, political enslavement, a radical limitation of sovereignty," he said, as quoted by the BBC.
Meanwhile, German Ambassador Michael Clauss, who presided over the Monday meeting, warned of a serious crisis if the budget and stimulus package are not passed in the near future.

European Center-Right's Dilemma

In the European Parliament, the position of the leftist parties and of the liberal Renew Europe is clear: they want to deprive Hungary and Poland of any European funding. On the other hand, the conservatives and the populists of the Identity & Democracy political group are supportive of the two states. The large right-of-center group, the Group of the European People's Party (EPP Group) is left in the middle. This group, led by the German Manfred Weber, who is very close to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is said to have divided loyalties, as Fidesz, the party of Viktor Orban, is a member of the group despite being suspended in 2019.


Von der Leyen to Unveil Plan for Migration Policy Overhaul After Moria Camp Fire

"If Viktor Orban and [Polish Deputy Prime Minister] Jaroslaw Kaczynski want to stop the use of these funds for everybody, then they will have to explain that to the millions of workers and business owners, the Mayors and students, the researchers and farmers that are counting on the support of these funds," Weber said in a statement.


"This is precisely the aim of the rule of law conditionality to ensure that the money reaches those in need and the funds are spent correctly. The EU budget is money from the citizens, for the citizens. If anything, the rule of law conditionality will ensure that every taxpayer’s money, including the Hungarian and Polish citizens’ taxes, is spent properly and where needed," Muresan said.
Now, the group, as well as the entire political class in Brussels, will have to find a way out of this crisis, making one wonder what will prevail — the desire to stick it to Eastern European leaders or the wish to pass the stimulus package as quickly as possible.

Presenter

Karl

[JustJohn or JJ]

Poland: EU budget comes with caveats we cannot accept

A clause in the EU budget which ties funding with adherence to the rule of law in the bloc cannot be accepted, Poland’s deputy foreign minister has said.

The provisions in the budget are so vague and wide that they would allow for politically motivated financial sanctions against Poland, Hungary or any other member state, Pawel Jablonski explained.

“Poland and Hungary are being targeted for months now and we know very well that it would simply be used the very next day against us,” he said.

The EU budget includes a Covid-19 recovery fund of €750bn (£673bn; $888bn).

Poland and Hungary are being investigated by the EU for undermining the independence of courts, media and non-governmental organisations, and the clause threatens to cost them billions of euros in EU funding.

www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-55001067

[karl]

J.J.

Although the following is not of personal concerns, still though it is of personal understanding in the manner of Democracy of which the states of Poland and Hungary are or should at least be a part of, are in their own personal rights. For although their actions are not the actions of a Democratice Republic, they are the internal affairs of each, and this needs be respected. But whilst of the above, these republics as above, should not expect to be treated as loving brothers and sisters of the EU, but needs be to not expect a share of the rewards as others will receive who have adhered to the requirements of the EU as minded by Brussels.


{Poland and Hungary are being investigated by the EU for undermining the independence of courts, media and non-governmental organisations, and the clause threatens to cost them billions of euros in EU funding.}

Karl

[Jaga]

John, Kai and Karl,

the road Poland is taking is a dangerous one. Poland is the largest recipient of the EU budget, so they get more than they give. They have to oblige to the rules, and changing the supreme court judges so that they would give the ruling party advantage was undemocratic. They may not receive any help from the EU if they would be too pushy.

[kaima]

From Der SPiegel


Rule of Law

Brussels Prepares for a Protracted Fight with Poland and Hungary

]By vetoing the EU budget, Hungary and Poland have plunged the bloc into a crisis and heaped pressure on Angela Merkel to find a solution. Brussels, though, might have a way to turn the tables.
By Markus Becker, Christiane Hoffmann, Martin Knobbe, Walter Mayr, Jan Puhl, Christian Reiermann und Britta Sandberg
20.11.2020, 18.00 Uhr




German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: "It's not one of the easier problems that we have to solve."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: "It's not one of the easier problems that we have to solve." Foto: Francisco Seco / DPA
European heads of state and government spoke for around three hours during their Thursday evening video conference, a pragmatic discussion focused primarily on the coronavirus. They talked about mutual recognition of test results, about preparations for a possible third wave, about vaccine distribution and about data collection on cross-border flights.



One issue, though, was not on the agenda, even though it is casting a pall over all of Europe at the moment: The refusal by Hungary and Poland to authorize the EU's Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) – the bloc's budget for the next seven years. And the divide in the EU that has been deepened by this veto.

With Germany currently holding the rotating Council of the EU presidency, Chancellor Angela Merkel briefly addressed the conflict at the beginning of the video conference. But the budget discussion lasted only about a quarter of an hour before European Council President Charles Michel shifted the focus of the talks to COVID-19 – in part, no doubt, because a solution to the budget conflict is as far away as ever.


"We have a duty to try to find a way forward," the chancellor said afterward. "But it's not one of the easier problems that we have to solve." European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, meanwhile, pushed for a rapid solution. "Millions of companies and people are waiting for our response in this unprecedented crisis."

Brussels is no stranger to serious conflict, whether its about money, the fair distribution of refugees or the degree to which the EU can intervene in member-state affairs on issues like climate change. But there is a lot at stake in the current crisis, far more than just the budget plan for the next seven years. It's also about the bloc's response to the corona crisis and assistance for those in need. And it's about the EU's core values. The MFF, after all, includes a clause linking EU funds to adherence to the rule of law. And that link is the source of the current feud.

This most recent EU crisis got its start last Monday with deafening silence. The EU ambassadors from the 27 member states had gathered in Room EB S7 on the seventh floor of the Europa building to discuss an historic package: the MFF for the next seven years and the coronavirus recovery fund, worth a total of 1.8 trillion euros. EU leaders had spent four days and nights in July hammering out the compromise, followed by weeks of negotiations with the European Parliament. Now, it was time for the ambassadors to approve the package. But the representatives from Hungary and Poland weren't having it.

Icy Silence
Their veto was aimed squarely at the clause allowing for funding to be cut in cases where rule-of-law principles are violated. The ambassadors had pushed through the mechanism at the beginning of the meeting, simply outvoting Hungary and Poland. But when it comes to larger funding issues, such as the EFF and the corona relief package, approval must be unanimous – making it easy for Hungary and Poland to get their revenge.

Meeting participants later reported that the other ambassadors responded with icy silence. The German representative, Michael Clauss, who was chairing the discussion, then introduced the next item on the agenda.

[pieter]

EU faces crisis as Hungary and Poland veto seven-year budget

Countries reject package over attempts to link funding to respect for rule of law


Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, arrives for an EU summit at the European council building in Brussels on 15 October. Photograph: Olivier Matthys/AP

The EU is facing a crisis after Hungary and Poland vetoed the bloc’s historic €1.8tn (£1.6tn) budget and coronavirus recovery plan over attempts to link funding to respect for democratic norms.

The move unravels months of negotiations over the scale and terms of the EU’s spending and sets the stage for a stormy videoconference meeting of the bloc’s leaders on Thursday.

Without agreement among the 27 member states, projects financed by the bloc’s seven-year budget will go without funds and the €750bn plan to rebuild Europe’s shattered economy will not be activated.

“I think we have a crisis again,” a senior EU diplomat said. “We’re back in crisis.”

Hungary and Poland had announced their intentions shortly before ambassadors of the EU’s member states met on Monday to vote on various parts of the financial settlement.

The capitals’ representatives had been due to sign off on the total financial package, requiring unanimity, and on the details of a mechanism to link the provision of funds with continued respect for the rule of law, requiring the support of a qualified majority of member states. They were also due to agree by consensus on a roadmap for new EU taxes to fund an increase in spending.

With Hungary only able to count on Poland to vote against the rule-of-law mechanism, the two countries had to be creative in order to block progress. Representatives for the two member states refused to support the plan to create new EU taxes, with the result that the whole package was torpedoed.

“Hungary has vetoed the budget,” said Zoltán Kovács, a spokesman for the country’s rightwing prime minister, Viktor Orbán. “We cannot support the plan in its present form to tie rule-of-law criteria to budget decisions.”


Zoltán Kovács, a spokesman for the country’s rightwing prime minister, Viktor Orbán

In a previous warning to fellow governments, Orbán, whose government has been accused of becoming increasingly authoritarian in style and substance, had written that he could not agree to a “proposed sanction mechanism … based on legally vague definitions such as ‘violation of the rule of law’.” He wrote: “Such difficult to define concepts create opportunities for political abuses and violate the requirement of legal certainty.”

The 27 EU heads of state and government had signed off on the broad spending package and the inclusion of a link to respect for the rule of law in July, after days of hard debate.

The details of the deal were then subject to further negotiations between the member states, represented by the German presidency of the EU, and the European parliament. Those talks resulted in the spending total increasing by about €15bn to be funded by new EU taxes.

There was also provisional agreement between the two sides on procedures to block funds from rogue EU governments found to be putting the rule of law or the independence of judges at risk.

The mechanism would allow a qualified majority of member states to impose sanctions where governments fail to maintain democratic standards.


Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte has told parliament that the Netherlands cannot accept any attempt to water down conditions for the EU’s new budget and coronavirus recovery fund, despite the threatened veto by Hungary and Poland.

Its inclusion followed the ill-fated launch of procedures under article 7 of the EU treaties against Poland in 2017 and Hungary in 2018 over alleged attempts by the governments to undermine the independence of their judges.

The article 7 procedure requires unanimity among the member states before sanctions, such as the removal of voting rights in Brussels, can be imposed. Both Poland and Hungary had said they would protect each other from such measures, leaving it ineffective.

Under the new mechanism, there would be greater accountability over EU payments through removal of that veto.

A senior diplomat said the European commission and the German presidency of the EU would need to “take stock” before deciding on the next steps.

Rasmus Andresen, a Green MEP who was part of the European parliament’s negotiation team, said: “The resistance of Orbán and the Polish government is irresponsible. Orbán is afraid that the new rule of law mechanism will harm his autocratic regime. He is trying to take Europe and Covid hostage for his failed policies.

“Hungary and Poland risk plunging the EU into a deep crisis. If the EU budget and the recovery package are blocked, the economic crisis in the EU will intensify and the Hungarian and Polish economies will suffer massively as a result.

“Chancellor [Angela] Merkel must now take the lead. False compromises are now out of place. Now it is becoming a problem that the chancellor has so far done little to interfere in the negotiations.”


Rasmus Andresen (born 20 February 1986) is a German politician of the Alliance 90/The Greens who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2019.

[kaima]

Opinion
The E.U. Puts Its Foot Down on the Rule of Law
While the leaders of Hungary and Poland resist.

By The Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Nov. 22, 2020
www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/opinion/eu-poland-hungary.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20201123&instance_id=24380&nl=the-morning®i_id=94799984&segment_id=45216&te=1&user_id=aeedb5eab46ff7275a38df5b049bd0fe


Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary.Credit...Omar Marques/Getty Images
After years of passively watching nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland undermine democratic rule, the European Union finally drew the line this year and declared that disbursements from the E.U. budget and a special coronavirus relief fund would be contingent on each member’s adherence to the rule of law. Hungary and Poland have shamelessly retaliated by threatening to veto the Union’s next seven-year budget, emergency funds and all, unless the condition is scrapped.

The governments in Budapest and Warsaw couched their defiance with their usual plaints that the bloc was behaving like their former Soviet overlords. “This is not why we created the European Union, so that there would be a second Soviet Union,” declared Viktor Orban, the proudly illiberal prime minister of Hungary. But such posturing has long been discredited, especially as both right-wing governments have happily reaped huge subsidies from the European Union.

The cynical reactions of Mr. Orban and the right-wing Law and Justice government in Warsaw demonstrated how far they have strayed from the fundamental principles they signed on to when they joined the European Union. They make no bones about it: Hungarian and Polish officials recently met to set up a joint institute to combat the “suppression of opinions by liberal ideology.”

Mr. Orban in particular has systematically worked to curtail the independence of the judiciary, bring the press to heel and curb civil society. With Fidesz, his nationalist party, in full control of Parliament, he took advantage of the coronavirus pandemic in March to assume broad and open-ended emergency powers that effectively allow him to rule by decree for as long as he wants.

Poland’s Law and Justice Party, run from behind the curtain by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has faced more opposition and so has moved more slowly, but in the same direction, and with the same illiberal zeal. Its latest effort was to have the Constitutional Court, packed with followers, sharply narrow already restricted access to abortion in Poland last month. An eruption of protests — which are continuing — forced the government to delay implementing the decision.


ImageDeputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party.
Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party.Credit...Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The European Union has long been cognizant of the illiberal drift of this duo, but the focus on unanimity in E.U. decision-making rendered it largely powerless to do anything about it. Hungary and Poland are the only two countries in the history of the Union to have been investigated by the executive arm of the bloc, the European Commission, under Article 7 of the Union treaty, which authorizes suspension of a member’s voting rights if it is found in “serious breach” of E.U. values. Actually doing so would require a unanimous vote by the rest of the Union, and either Hungary or Poland would block punishment of the other.

Withholding funds from wayward members, by contrast, would not require unanimity. The budget, however, does, so that’s where Hungary and Poland made their stand. If the 1.8 trillion-euro ($2.1 trillion) budget is blocked, E.U. rules allow for some emergency spending, but the sorely needed, and painfully negotiated, €750 billion emergency stimulus package would be delayed, dealing a serious blow to a continent in the grips of a major second wave of the coronavirus, and especially Spain and Italy, the hardest hit E.U. members. Though Hungary and Poland would also lose, they are betting that they can outbluff the rest.

So far, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose country currently holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, has been reluctant to enter into an open war with Mr. Orban or Mr. Kaczynski. After a video conference of E.U. leaders on Thursday — including Mr. Orban and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland — Ms. Merkel declared only that it was “a serious problem that we have to solve and we will work hard and earnestly on it.”

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That work should focus on compelling Hungary and Poland to back down. Whatever other disagreements E.U. members may harbor — and, as Britain’s exit showed, these are many and deep — the concept of the Union as a community of democratic values has remained at its heart.

If Hungary and Poland succeed in what amounts to blackmail, other wavering members — Slovenia, for one, has already signaled that it is sympathetic to their cause — would follow suit, and liberal democracy would suffer a major setback. It is not by chance that Mr. Orban, in particular, has openly lauded President Trump and has found common cause with the likes of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Mr. Trump’s former political strategist Steve Bannon.

The European Union has finally found a lever to compel members to hew to the fundamental tenet of Western democracy, the rule of law. The Union must make clear that it is prepared to use it.

[karl]

It appears as to substance that this issue is a wait and see situation. Wait will be expensive and see is a result some will not enjoy.

Karl