The European Union has reached the crossroads. Either its leaders choose to protect the values that the bloc stands for. Or they can discard them and turn their back on the achievements chalked up by the EU since its foundation after 1945. At stake is Europe’s commitment to democracy.
Those achievements were hard-earned. They were fundamentally about bringing peace and stability to a Europe of which large parts were devastated by World War II.
They were about ending so many years of enmity between France and Germany. And especially for Germany, they were about coming to terms with the destruction of European Jewry in the Holocaust.
A later achievement was the EU’s enlargement policy. Strongly supported by the United States, enlargement was about expanding democracy, the market economy, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and solidarity between European countries.
The accession of Greece, Portugal, and Spain to the bloc in the 1980s gave these countries the chance to build democracy after years of living under fascist or military dictatorships. The big bang of 2004, when the EU admitted most of the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, was about Europe becoming whole, free, and united. What achievements!
But now, that unity, freedom, and democracy is under severe strain—indeed, under threat—as two countries that joined in 2004, Hungary and Poland, are doing their utmost to undermine so much of what the EU stands for.
The leaders of Hungary and Poland, so far, are determined to block the EU’s €1.8 trillion budget package, consisting of the seven-year budget for 2021–2027 and the one-off Next Generation EU instrument aimed at helping the bloc’s economies recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
After many years of turning a blind eye to or mildly chastising Hungary and Poland for undermining the rule of law, many deputies in the European Parliament and most of the member states have had enough.
They have made the disbursal of EU funds conditional on abiding by the EU’s treaties. Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union couldn’t be clearer. It states that the union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, and democracy.
Just as important, in July 2020, the European Council agreed that the protection of the union’s financial interests along with the respect for the rule of law is important.
In the case of Poland, it has become so obvious how Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the governing Law and Justice Party, has been dismantling the independence of the Polish judiciary. This assault on the rule of law endangers democracy and accountability, not only in Poland, but also for the rest of the EU. It erodes the separation of powers, one of the fundaments of democratic institutions and practices.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has gotten away with using EU funds to build a semi-authoritarian system based on cronyism and increasingly centered on himself. That is why the July European Council also stressed the importance of protecting EU funds against fraud and irregularities.
Hungary and Poland are standing firm.
A joint declaration by their prime ministers on November 26 in Budapest was meant as a threat to the other member states. “Our objective is to prevent a mechanism which would not strengthen, but undermine the Rule of Law within the Union by degrading it to a political instrument.” They even added that the “proposed conditionality circumvents the Treaty” and met again on November 30 in Warsaw to further coordinate their positions.
Most of the other EU governments have had enough of the blackmail.
Spain and Italy, which have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, desperately need the budget and recovery funds. The northern member states, particularly the Netherlands, are in no mood to compromise. The rule of law and the budget have become indivisible. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s attempts to end the impasse by proposing compromises, watering down the conditionality, have so far not been accepted by Budapest and Warsaw.
But the EU can bypass the two countries in a number of ways.
Several analysts suggest enhanced cooperation, which would allow a group of countries to move ahead with the budget, circumventing the EU’s requirement of unanimity voting on financial matters. Others suggest a special framework for eurozone countries, with an exemption for non-eurozone countries to join. These options are technical and complex but doable.
But ultimately, it’s the bigger picture that matters.
The EU prides itself on internal solidarity and the rule of law. By blocking crucial funds, the leaders of Hungary and Poland are damaging that solidarity in order to defend their own hold on power, in turn undermining the EU’s commitment to democracy at home and abroad.
It is this commitment that is now in danger. If not averted soonest, Europe’s slide away from democracy cannot be underestimated.
Comments(5)
Judy I tend to look at Poland and Hungary as a wake up call for the EU itself to fully democratise, this idea of appointed commissions and appointed CEO and President as things stands is patently undemocratic. The executive at EU must stand to face the public and be backed or sacked as just now Poland and Hungary are far more democratic than the EU elite. The MEP's in parliament most also stand as pan EU parties with policies and the executive should come within them like most countries parliaments. So Judy until there is at least some semblance of a government by the people for the people this like a supreme soviet just now.
Stability in Europe since WWII? The Sword of Damocles has hung above the heads of Europeans for the last seventy years. So far by luck alone, this nuclear sword hasn't fallen. But luck is hardly stability! Now with the expansion of NATO and the demise of the ABM, INF and the shaky fragility of START, European stability is the greatest misnomer of the century. Who or what comes after Lukashenko could so tilt the the conventional balance to shake the nuclear sword from its very pegs -- i.e. deterrence. Gorbachev and Yeltsin were both promised that German unification would not lead to NATO expansion. It was at this point in history that real stability across all of Europe could have been negotiated. Now such a possibility is as remote as peace, a mere pipe dream. The ultimate blame for this fiasco of hegemony needs to be firmly placed at the feet of Washington and Brussels. The fact is that trans-national sovereignty is a mirage and that so-called EU values solidarity doesn't exist. Values always differ. This is especially true in the US, where the states have withdrawn their individual sovereignty for a federal union. But the US has never been a multi-national entity. Only recently have enough Hispanics come into the country to change its essentially Anglo composition. But even though the US has been historically divided by race, Hispanics are neither a race or a singular nationality. While the vast majority of Blacks do not, and never have, identify themselves with a national or ethnic identity. Even without the baggage of multi-national and ethnic identity, Americans are certainly not uniform when it comes to values. Europe will never become another federal super-state because Europeans do not, and never have, identified themselves as Europeans first. Unlike in the US, where New Yorkers are Americans first, Europeans are Czechs, Slovaks, Scots, French and Slovenes first. Since WWII, Western Europe and now the EU has been more a category of economic growth than anything close to the US political model. And the EU is not simply divided between east and west: it is also divided between north and south. Fiscal restraint is a value of the the European north, not the south. Stockholm and many others do not want good money chasing bad. Even in America, these fiscal divisions are fast becoming a test of unity. What the countries of the EU need is not a super-state to maintain the mirage of peace. What is needed is a new security architecture to replace NATO.
Does a probability/possibility exist that Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland could veto the EU's eventual trade agreement and future relations with the UK ? It takes only 1 EU Member to vote "No", and then ... ?
Hello, interested article about Europes history. I'm not politic involved but let's not be too fast to judge. The European union values are changing in time and regulated up from only. As soon a country have an option which is different and voted from its people then it's not welcomed. About the way these countries uses veto and blocking the money it's because it's their only tool they can use against EU which acting quite undemocratic. EU does the same when it's about to split and share resources in form money for projects. Countries have to accept a bunch of terms they have nothing to do with the matter. EU using it as pressure method. Ugly but effective. Let's not judge countries who believe in values many times are based on better principles.
You are basing your argument on two false assumptions. The first is that that you take at face value the allegation made by the political opposition in Poland that the government is destroying judicial independence; the allegation is simply not true. The second is that the "rule of law" criteria has not been defined in the Treaties, and the current German/EC proposal would put an administrative organ (the EC) in charge of deciding on an issue which is a legal issue (That is an arrangement that violates the separation of powers principle). There is even an opinion by the Commission's own legal service that state that the proposal to make budget disbursments conditional on the rule of law violates the existing treaties.
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