The Advocate General of the European Union Court recommends that Judges reject the application initiated by Warsaw and Budapest to cancel the mechanism that determines the payment of Community funds to respect for the law.
by
The European Commission should soon be able to use the mechanism of conditionality of the payment of Community funds to the respect of the rule of law. The Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has indeed recommended, Thursday, December 2, that the Judges of Luxembourg reject the remedies of annulment committed by Hungary and Poland against this regulation. Its conclusions are certainly not binding but, most of the time, they are followed by the Court, which should now decide shortly.
During the negotiations between the twenty-seven on the European stimulus plan, in 2020, several Member States in Northern Europe for the most part, the country, as well as the European Parliament, had of this mechanism a condition sine qua non. They demanded that it be possible to block the payment of aid – and more broadly from all the Community funds – to a country whose state-of-law failures would threaten the good use of European money. No question of accepting that a common debt be issued to finance this huge financial package if, in return, they did not obtain guarantees on this subject.
Independent justice
Warsaw and Budapest eventually yielded in December 2020, but it was then agreed that if they had to challenge the legality of the mechanism before the EU Court of Justice, the Commission would expect the outcome of the procedure before To appeal, and that it would take into account, where appropriate, any remarks by the Judges of Luxembourg. In March, the governments of Marefi Morawiecki and Viktor Orban have therefore, as expected, formed an action for annulment of the text, of which they challenged the legality and compliance with treaties.
The conditionality mechanism “has been adopted on an adequate legal basis, it is compatible with [the Treaties] and respects the principle of legal certainty,” said Jeue’s general lawyer said on Thursday. Manuel Campos Sanchez-Bordona stressed that the regulation “does not apply to all violations of the rule of law, but only to those with a direct link with budget execution”. In the present case, it requires independent justice – this is no longer the case in Poland – or the existence of a sufficient arsenal to effectively fight against corruption, which is not found in Hungary.
You have 48.7% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.