The General Affairs Council is expected to return on 22 June, after a long break, to the so-called Article 7 procedures against Poland and Hungary, with probably two new hearings, a diplomatic source said on 3 June.
As the meeting is in face-to-face format, the Portuguese Presidency intends to organise these two exercises which were last held in 2019 (see EUROPE 12387/3).
However, the agenda of the General Affairs Council has to be confirmed by the ambassadors of the EU Member States on 4 June.
Annual report
The European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, for its part, approved, by 49 votes to 10 with 4 abstentions, the own-initiative report on the 2020 annual report on the Rule of law in the EU-27, tabled by Spain’s Domènec Ruiz Devesa (S&D), which calls on the Commission to back up its annual reports with concrete legal measures and to make them an effective prevention tool.
“For this, the report must include clear recommendations, and deadlines to fulfil them, and clear links to other Rule of law tools that could be triggered if Member States ignore the recommendations, whether it is Article 7 proceedings, infringement proceedings or the conditionality mechanism”, the rapporteur explains in a statement.
“Clearly, a preventive approach is not enough for countries like Hungary and Poland. In future, the report should make the distinction between countries where some aspects of the Rule of law need improving, and countries where disregard for the Rule of law is clearly systemic”, says the rapporteur. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)