The Court of Justice of the European Union has fully validated the scheme that allows the Commission to deprive of Community money a country where violations of the rule of law are observed.
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The sign of the importance given to the case, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), for the first time, broadcast live on its site the reading of its decision, Wednesday, February 16, to 9:30. The judges of Luxembourg knew their expected judgment, whereas the future of the mechanism of conditionality of the payment of Community funds was played there to comply with the rule of law.
The Court rejected “in their entirety” the remedies for annulment of this Regulation that Poland and Hungary had introduced. It has thus validated, without reservation, this new device, which allows the Commission to deprive of Community money a country where violations of the rule of law are observed which “reaches or may affect” the financial interests of The EU “in a sufficiently direct way”.
In negotiations between the twenty-seven European stimulus of 750 billion euros and budget 2021-2027 of € 1,070 billion, in the summer of 2020, several countries, including the countries- Low, had made this conditionality mechanism a condition sine qua non support. Warsaw and Budapest, for their part, had threatened to block the entire budget package if it was adopted. They had finally ramvée, after having obtained from their partners the commitment that the Commission would not make use as long as the CJEU would not have pronounced.
Poland and Hungary are among the main beneficiaries of the European funds and, from this point of view, this regulation that the CJEU has just validated could be very harmful. In the context of the multiannual budget, Warsaw must affect more than 110 billion euros and Budapest of more than 35 billion euros between 2021 and 2027. As to the stimulus plan, they hold aid respectively of 23.9 billion and 7. , 2 billion euros, but they have not received a euro for the moment. In advance, the Commission requires that the Prime Minister, Morset Morawiecki, hires a reform of Polish justice, today at the pay of power, and that his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orban, tackles corruption, became endemic.
The European Parliament is impatient
The Commission “will carefully analyze the motivations” of the judges, reacted his president, Ursula von der Leyen, who does not look in a hurry to act. The Community Executive should publish “the guidelines” of the Regulation – a kind of manner of employment – on March 2nd and, above all, decide by the use it intends to do. Knowing that, since it decides to launch hostilities, it will still be necessary to count six to nine months before the procedure goes to an end.
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