As reaffirmed in recent days, the Commission decided on Wednesday 27 May to maintain the conditionality it had established in 2018 between the European budget and respect for the rule of law in the revised version of its 2021-2027 budget.
It also said that the recovery funds, which are to be temporary, should also be in line with the EU's core values, with the Commission promising here to closely monitor the emergency measures, their duration and proportionality and to report on them in its first annual rule of law report, due in September.
"In the face of the crisis, all Member States had to adopt emergency measures. The Commission has made it clear from the outset that emergency measures must be strictly proportionate and limited in time and nature. All these measures must be subject to regular monitoring and full respect for all rights", it says in its communication.
However, the Commission does not specify whether these recovery funds will be strictly conditional on the lifting of these emergency measures or on their proportionate and limited nature. At this stage, therefore, its most concrete proposal remains that of 2018.
As a reminder, its proposal for a regulation aimed to protect the EU budget against the financial risks linked to "generalised failures" of the rule of law (see EUROPE 12013/3).
Under this mechanism, the Union could suspend, reduce or restrict access to European funding until the failures have been remedied.
It could be activated when the following are at risk: the proper functioning of the authorities implementing the Union's budget; public investigation and prosecution of budget-related fraud or effective judicial control by independent courts.
Since then, however, the EU27 have weakened the scope of the mechanism, particularly in February, when the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, proposed, after consultations, a decision-making method making it more complex to activate. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)