The EU is witholding €10 billion of Hungarian recovery funds over Rule of Law clash
I found a strong interest in Hungary's situation after my holidays in Budapest. Did you know that about €10 billion seat in Brussels while Orbán makes racist comments?
What is the Rule of Law?
As an introduction to this piece, let me put here a translation of the first paragraph of the French Wikipedia "Rule of Law” page1. You will see that the definition is quite straightforward.
Rule of law […] asserts the pre-eminence of law over political power.
Of which law are we talking about? Not the national law: autocratic states are problematic for sure, but at least they respect their own laws. The law in question here is European law.
European law is based on the principle that it takes precedence over national laws. Rules that have been agreed upon at the European level apply to all member states and have to be introduced into national legislation.
The problem is that a few European states do not respect this principle anymore. In this article, let’s explore the state of Rule of Law and see what tools are at the disposition of the European institutions to assert their pre-eminence over national political power.
Hungary - the big bad wolf
The situation in Hungary is well known. The current Prime Minister Viktor Orbán seized power in 2010 and presented in 2012 a new constitution for the country that cemented his and the Fidesz party’s rule. In ten years, the media saw their liberties schrink, the constitution enshrined reactionary policies on religion, marriage, and abortion, corruption and clientelism rose to become mainstream.
At the beginning of 2022, even before the aggression of Ukraine by Russia, the Commission considered cutting the recovery funds to Hungary2, following a report from the European Parliament asking that “EU Recovery Funds should not go to governments that do not respect core democratic values or uphold the Rule of Law.”
In April, the Commission announced it would trigger the conditionality mechanism, effectively blocking a little less than €10 billion of recovery funds to reach Hungary3. Thus, the country’s recovery plan never arrived in Hungary, because of a lack of transparency in European funds usage.
This complex process might bear fruits, as Hungary seems “ready for compromise with Brussels”, as European news outlet Euronews puts it4. However, the negotiations between the Hungarian government and the European executive were recently shaken by last week’s declarations of Viktor Orbán, who claimed that Hungary “does not want to become a mixed race”. Talk about compromise…
Other countries would be interesting to look at - Bulgaria and Romania ranking high in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index5. Poland too has been facing criticism for some time over its reactionary measures. Perhaps something to explore in later pieces. If that is something you would like to explore, do leave a comment below.
In the meantime, you can subscribe to The Beubble, and never miss an article.
Rule of Law on Wikipedia (in French)