Brussels is taking new steps to tighten its control over EU member states, using both financial pressure and constitutional mechanisms to enforce what it calls ‘rule-of-law’ standards.
These moves reflect an increasingly autocratic tendency within the EU institutions, as they aim to increase their own powers by punishing dissent to sideline sovereign member states.
Two recent developments confirm this trend.
The European Commission wants to make ‘rule-of-law’ compliance a binding condition for receiving money from the EU’s next €1.2 trillion budget. In short: member states that say no to EU dictates get no funds.
Officials justify this by pointing to a lack of progress on recommendations made in the recently published annual Rule-of-Law reports, which evaluate member states’ efforts in tackling corruption, improving media freedom, and ensuring judicial independence.
As with every annual report, Hungary has been singled out again: the Central European country, which has rejected the EU’s pro-migration policies, LGBT propaganda, and centralisation attempts, is being punished and has been told that €18 billion of its EU funds will remain frozen.
The EU is increasingly using its financial clout not just to punish fraud or mismanagement, but to enforce a political vision—one increasingly defined by the Brussels ruling elites.
Hungary has been attacked and threatened for the past few years over issues that are its own domestic affairs and that have nothing to do with EU competences, such as its child protection law, its anti-migration border protection policies, and its sovereign foreign policy which pursues a pro-peace stance with regards to the war in Ukraine.
These issues are being represented in the Brussels institutions as a threat to vaguely defined EU ‘values,’ which Hungary must be punished for ‘undermining.’
Citing the inability by Hungary and some other member states to comply with ‘rule-of-law’ standards, Michael McGrath, the European Commissioner for Democracy, Justice and Rule of Law, said on Tuesday, July 8th, that Brussels is now drawing up plans to make it mandatory for countries to uphold ‘rule-of-law’ standards as a condition of receiving funding from the bloc’s €1.2 trillion budget.
The Commission will set out its draft budget blueprint on July 16th. Approving such a tool for blackmailing member states would have far-reaching consequences, not just for Hungary.
In a parallel move, Denmark—currently holding the EU’s rotating presidency—is pushing to suspend Hungary’s voting rights under Article 7 of the EU Treaty.
This so-called “nuclear option” is intended for member states that seriously violate EU “values,” and, according to Denmark, Hungary falls into that category.
The other member states would have to unanimously agree on suspending Hungary’s rights, but there has been no appetite among the majority of governments for such a drastic step.
The timing is no coincidence. Hungary is challenging Brussels on the rush to fast-track Ukraine’s EU membership. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has rightly argued that admitting a country that is currently at war, and whose territory is partly under the control of Russia, into the EU would only bring the EU closer to war as well.
The PM has also warned that Ukraine’s membership would severely harm the EU’s economy.
Though the EU was founded on the principle of unity in diversity, it is becoming more and more obvious that diversity of opinion is being treated as a threat. Rather than persuading Hungary through dialogue, Brussels elites seem determined to isolate and punish it.
