The European Parliament will call on the Eu Council to adopt measures against Hungary under the cross-compliance regulation, as proposed by the European Commission on 18 September 2022, according to the draft joint resolution to be voted on in the plenary session on Thursday 24 November.
The joint draft resolution (EPP, S&D, Renew Europe, Greens/EFA, The Left) calls on the EU Council to lift the adopted measures only after it has been established that the conditions for the adoption of the measures are no longer fulfilled, namely that “the corrective measures adopted by the Hungarian government have had a lasting effect in practice”. The European Parliament underlines that, according to the draft text, if these measures were to be cancelled in the future, the Union would have to make a financial correction.
The Commission has proposed a suspension of cohesion funds for Hungary to the tune of €7.5 billion. These measures were generally welcomed in the Chamber during a debate on Monday 21 November in Strasbourg (see EUROPE 13067/19).
“Solving problems”. Responding to MEPs, EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said that the regulation in question “is a tool to prevent risks to the EU budget. We need to approach the problems we can all see with the mindset of solving the problems”.
He said that Hungary was committed to “a thorough reform of its system”. “The Commission’s assessment is underway and will be finalised without undue delay before the end of this month”, the Commissioner promised. The date of 30 November is often mentioned. As in the case of the conditionality procedure, the final decision on the approval of Hungary’s recovery and resilience plan rests with the EU Council, according to Reynders.
Speaking to the press on Tuesday 22 November, the chair of the S&D group, Iratxe García Pérez from Spain, took a “very firm stance. We ask the Commission not to pay the money”.
For Stéphane Séjourné (Renew Europe, French), the group he chairs “will not accept any arrangement between the Commission and the Hungarian government on the issue of European funds”. The planned reform is insufficient, in his view. “No funds should be released until the Rule of law is fully restored in Hungary”, concluded Mr Séjourné.
EU funds should only be paid to states where there are safeguards to protect that money. But for Hungary this is not the case, as Terry Reintke (Greens/EFA, German) told the press.
For Manfred Weber (EPP, German), “it is not about punishing” Hungary, but about protecting European taxpayers’ money. The European Parliament must be “united” for the regulation to work, concluded Weber.
Link to the draft resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/460 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur, with editors)