“The
rule of law is our treasure”, said Clément Beaune on behalf of the
French Presidency of the Council. He welcomed the “necessary legal
clarity” given today by the Court and said that the French Presidency
now expects the Commission to implement it. The French Presidency is
committed to mobilising all the tools to protect the rule of law, he
stressed.
Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn said
that the Court’s ruling is now being analysed by the Commission, which
will swiftly finalise its guidelines on how to apply the regulation. He
underlined that the mechanism is one of the tools in the EU’s rule of
law protection toolbox and that it is key to choose the right tools to
address specific problems. He reassured MEPs that the Commission was
monitoring the situation across member states to identify any potential
breaches to the rule of law and pointed out that it has already sent
informal letters to two member states. Pointing to President Ursula von
der Leyen’s statement, he said that when the conditions of the regulation have been fulfilled, the Commission will act with determination.
“Today is a day of victory for
Parliament”, MEPs said, stressing that the ECJ ruling confirmed the
Parliament’s stance that EU money should not go to governments that
violate EU values. Many underlined that now the Commission had run out
of excuses for delays. Many speakers said they had had enough of hearing
bureaucratic excuses, while some member states were being taken over by
tyrants, with justice systems degrading, freedom of press restricted
and minorities’ rights curtailed. They recalled that the Commission’s
role is to guard the EU treaties and protect the founding values to
which all EU countries have committed.
Some speakers accused the EU
institutions of punishing Hungary and Poland for political reasons and
discriminating between “better” and “worse”. Rule of law problems and
politicised justice systems exist also in other EU countries, such as
Germany and Spain, they said.
Watch extracts from the debate here
Background
The budget conditionality regulation
aims to protect EU funds from being misused by national governments
that breach the rule of law. The regulation entered into force on 1
January 2021. So far, the Commission has not applied it.
On 11 March 2021, Poland and Hungary challenged the regulation in the EU Court of Justice.
On 16 February 2022, the EU Court of Justice issued a ruling that
actions by Hungary and Poland against the rules on conditionality,
which protect the European Union’s budget, should be dismissed.