European Union member states’ access to the EU budget—including agricultural aid and subsidies—should be tied to their adherence to EU norms, values, and respect for the rule of law with no exceptions. That’s according to Swedish and Finnish European affairs ministers in a joint letter sent to the European Commission ahead of a ministerial meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, September 24th.
Pointing to how payments from EU’s cohesion and pandemic relief funds are conditioned on countries adhering to ‘EU values’ and ‘rule of law,’ the ministers said the system should be extended to cover all forms of EU funding accessible to member states and turned into a “general feature in all areas of the EU budget.”
“All member states must adhere to our common values, notably rule of law, democracy, and fundamental rights,” Sweden’s Jessica Rosencrantz and Finland’s Joakim Strand wrote in their joint letter.
All member states have of their own free will signed up to these values. However, unfortunately, reality has shown the need for an active rule of law policy.
Although the ministers make it sound as if EU “values” are set in stone, the reality is that they have always been subject to debate. The same is true about how much Brussels is allowed to interfere in sovereign member states’ democratic decision-making processes and judicial rulings.
Since the introduction of the conditionality mechanism in 2020, the EU has frozen nearly €140 billion in cohesion funds and pandemic assistance to Poland and Hungary over their alleged rule-of-law violations, mistreatment of illegal migrants, and anti-LGBT policies—in effect defining common sense border control and pro-family measures as contrary to ‘EU values.’
The fact that Poland’s suspended funds were almost immediately released after the defeat of the previous conservative PiS government even without the new administration having enough time to implement the required reforms demonstrates what Brussels’ intentions truly are with the rule-of-law conditionality: either force countries to submit to its ideological blackmail, or better yet, increase pressure on the population to vote out the government that’s ‘responsible’ for getting less money.
However, extending this measure to every type of EU fund, especially agricultural subsidies, would mark a new low in Brussels’ political extortion tactics. For one, farming communities in many Central European or otherwise conservative-leaning countries depend a lot on the EU’s €264 billion worth of assistance in the common budget—including €189 billion in direct income support and €66 billion for the development of impoverished rural areas.
Moreover, European farmers have proven to be a formidable force to reckon with during this past year’s protests, and Brussels might want to turn this anger and energy against the farmers’ own governments instead of the EU. Using the poorest of Europe’s farmers as pawns in their blackmailing game against sovereigntist governments sounds evil, but it’s certainly not far from how the European Commission thinks and operates.
One of the main objectives of the incoming second von der Leyen administration will be a ‘radical’ overhaul and expansion of the EU’s common budget to put the Union in line with its larger geopolitical goals, such as strengthening its defense industrial output and increasing its global economic competitiveness. These reforms will provide the perfect opportunities for Brussels to introduce new rules for accessing funds as well, and it would be naïve to expect the Commission to let them pass.
