The Renew Europe group in the European Parliament published on Tuesday 7 July a paper on the conditionality of the European budget in which it suggests that in case of violation of the rule of law by a Member State, the citizens of that State should not be penalised by their government.
The Commission is in a position to manage its funds directly and to send them to the citizens, without prior payment to the country’s authorities, who might be suspected of corruption or fraudulent use of EU funds. A concern that Parliament has regarding Hungary and the Czech Republic. For the Renew Europe group, this is therefore “smart conditionality”.
“In the light of the retreat of the rule of law and attacks on democratic institutions, particularly in Poland and Hungary, Renew Europe believes that safeguards are needed to ensure that governments that shed EU values cannot use EU funds to reward themselves”, the group notes in its 32-page document.
“Conditionality should not deprive beneficiaries and EU citizens of funding or opportunities. Local authorities, NGOs, civil society organisations and SMEs should not suffer from the actions of their own government.”
Renew Europe recalls on this subject that it is attached to the Commission’s initial proposal on the rule of law and conditionality: any sanction proposed by the Commission must be adopted by a reverse qualified majority vote in the EU Council and be deemed adopted unless a qualified majority rejects it.
The EU Council is tempted to reverse the method and make it more difficult to suspend funds.
Own-initiative report
Renew Europe is also the author of an own-initiative report on the rule of law mechanism, which will be discussed in the Committee on Civil Liberties on 13 July.
Slovak MEP Michal Šimečka proposes in his plan to set up “an EU mechanism on democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights”, as requested by Parliament in 2016, building on the first annual report on the rule of law announced by the Commission for September.
An interinstitutional agreement will have to provide for this mechanism, which will encompass, consolidate and replace existing instruments, in particular the annual report on the rule of law, the Commission’s framework for the rule of law, the EU Council’s dialogue on the rule of law and the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM), while increasing complementarity and coherence with other available tools such as the procedures under Article 7 of the TEU, budgetary conditionality and the ‘European Semester’.
The annual monitoring cycle proposed by Parliament “should contain country-specific information, recommendations, with timetables and targets for implementation”.
Links to the Renew Europe document: https://bit.ly/3gBFTUp and to the own-initiative report: https://bit.ly/3e3CLiE (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)