Poland and Hungary confirmed, on Monday 16 November, that they were blocking the adoption of the legislative acts on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021-2027 and the EU Recovery Plan because of a text they do not like on Rule of law ‘conditionality’.
The German EU Council Presidency will consult the Member States and decide how to proceed.
Poland and Hungary put their threat into action at Monday’s meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States to the EU (Coreper).
Coreper examined the legislative texts arising from the full agreement on the MFF and the Recovery Plan (see EUROPE 12600/3). Unanimity is required on the Own Resources Decision (which launches the Recovery Plan) and on the MFF Regulation.
However, Hungary and Poland indicated that they could not accept these texts.
The German Presidency was also able to note the existence of a qualified majority in the EU Council on the text of the Regulation establishing a link between the disbursement of funds from the EU budget and respect for the Rule of law. However, as all these texts form a package, the written procedure to adopt this text has not yet been launched.
New crisis. The MFF and the Recovery Plan could be on the menu for the European Council videoconference on Thursday 19 November.
At Coreper, some delegations (Poland, Slovenia...) are said to have wanted EU leaders to discuss these issues.
Hungary allegedly claimed that the text on the Rule of law does not respect the Treaties (the EU Council Legal Service says the opposite: editor’s note). The criteria laid down in the text does not guarantee objectivity, according to Hungary, which denounces a mechanism motivated by political arguments.
For Poland, the text on the Rule of law does not respect the EU Council’s mandate and Article 7 of the Treaty should not be ‘reproduced’ (serious violation of the values on which the Union is founded). Warsaw is concerned about a reduction in the EU Council’s powers in the agreed text and the failure to comply with the conclusions of the European Council of 21 July.
The German Presidency of the EU Council is said to have regretted the impossibility of reaching a consensus at Member State level on this package at a time when the EU is experiencing a second wave of Covid-19.
This blockage risks plunging the EU into another serious crisis, European sources said.
The European Commission is reported to have stressed that without the MFF, the 2021 annual budget cannot be adopted and will have to operate under the system of ‘provisional twelfths’. This means that not more than one twelfth of the budget appropriations for the previous year or of the draft budget proposed by the Commission – whichever is smaller – may be spent each month for any chapter of the budget.
Commissioner for Budget and Administration Johannes Hahn called on Member States to “assume their political responsibility and take the necessary steps to finalise the whole package, not for ideological reasons, but to help our citizens in the crisis”.
The French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clément Beaune, stressed that the blocking of the European budget by Hungary and Poland “ does not call into question our determination on the recovery and the Rule of law. A solution will be found in the next few weeks, France is fully committed to it”.
Manfred Weber (EPP, Germany) criticised the Polish and Hungarian vetoes: “If Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński 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”.
Philippe Lamberts (Greens/EFA, Belgium) said that Mr Orbán and Mr Kaczyński are holding the Recovery Plan hostage “so that they can continue to undermine the Rule of law”.
Link to the text on own resources: https://bit.ly/2ICpHGV (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)