On Tuesday 28 February, during a speech she made in Vienna, celebrating ten years of the European Agency for Fundamental Rights, the European Commissioner for Justice, Věra Jourová, expressed her wish to explore the conditions involving member states respecting fundamental rights and the rule of law as a precondition for European funding. One source explained that this will involve discussing the context for the next budgetary exercise, as the idea has not yet been discussed by the College of Commissioners.
The only instrument currently available is Article 7 of the Treaty, which can impose penalties such as the freezing of a member state’s voting rights at the Council.
The Commissioner did not explicitly mention the case of Poland but did say that she was not entirely satisfied with the fundamental rights situation in the EU and was in a rather “combative mood”. The EU leader said that one of her priorities involved working together, “to stem the outburst of violence and hatred in the EU…Incitement to violence and hatred know no borders- especially online, our new public space”. The Commissioner also asserted that, “We need a strong quality press to give the real facts and defeat fake news”.
Regions express scepticism. One source from the Committee of the Regions (CoR) repeated the position of its organisation, which is particularly in favour of integrating migrants and solidarity. The proposal by Commissioner Jourová, however, could appear to resemble macro-conditionality, it added on Wednesday 1 March. In a reference to the controversy involving the sanctions previously planned against the Spanish and the Portuguese regions last year (EUROPE 11669), the CoR source explained that, “this would mean that the local and regional level would suffer from policies carried out at a national level”.
The CoR source added that the regions are not, however, against the principle of conditions, such as ex ante conditions. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic and Pascal Hansens)