Viktor Orbán makes good on his threat and throws EU’s €1.8 trillion budget and its coronavirus rescue fund into chaos.
RT.com
16 Nov, 2020 20:39
Brussels’ plot to withhold budget and recovery funds from countries it deems as not playing by the rules has blown up in its face as the Hungarian PM vetoes schemes, putting EU projects in doubt and economies on the brink.
After failing to take him seriously, the Bullies of Brussels have been brutally humiliated by Hungarian Prime Minister
Viktor Orbán on Monday, after he followed through on his threat to veto the EU’s €1.8 trillion budget and coronavirus recovery fund.
In letters to the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel, Orbán wrote that Hungary would veto all elements of the legal package for the budget and the Next Generation EU recovery and resilience facility, on the grounds that, “there is agreement on nothing as long as there is not agreement on everything.”
The seven-year EU budget and the recovery fund require unanimity from bloc members if the billions and billions of Euros it promises are to be doled out across the continent. Orbán has effectively scuppered that ambition.
Those European countries with economies decimated by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, who were greedily eyeing up their portions of the €750-billion rescue package, suddenly face an uncertain future. There will be shock and dismay as the realisation settles in that they now face the possibility of being left with nothing at all to help lick their economic wounds.
Orbán was furious at plans by the European Commission to link payments from the massive cash funds to an insistence that funding for member nations could be withheld where it was determined there were “breaches of the principles of the rule of law in a member state.”
Undeniably a strong authoritarian type – not everyone’s cup of tea – the Hungarian PM isn’t about to sit back and be told what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour in his own backyard, particularly when those doing the telling are unelected foreign Eurocrats sitting in plush offices in another country.
The idea of making fund payments conditional on a nation’s attitude towards Brussels wasn’t just rainbow-thinking by the Eurocrats, it was a move specifically aimed at forcing Orbán back into line, with the European commission irritated by Budapest’s interference with the judiciary, its meddling with media ownership and the PM’s ongoing spat with billionaire philanthropist George Soros and his Open Foundation.
Those in Brussels and the liberal set
don’t much like Orbán and here was a chance to make him play by their rules.
While any onlooker can see how these problematic issues may be of concern, surely these are matters ultimately for the Hungarian people to work out themselves, without interference from a commission formed by members of Europe’s highly-privileged political establishment.
The fact that Brussels believes that financial penalties, rather than negotiation, compromise and diplomacy, provide the best method of determining how its role should be interpreted, shines a spotlight on the lack of creative thinking and a reluctance to learn any lessons from the past at the very top of Europe.
Remember Brexit, anyone?
Now, having had its nose rubbed in its interference in a very public way, the EU has to find a way out of this mess before other countries, Poland for starters, decide that they should follow suit and use Hungary’s playbook to express their discontent with the way Brussels runs things, simultaneously embarrassing their masters and denying the budget and recovery fund.
Before you know it, the whole plan to use the rule of law as the yardstick for funding will collapse in heap, projects across the continent relying on EU funding will be abandoned as the money dries up and any hope of providing help to shattered national economies so urgently needed will be gone.
And for President von der Leyen, Charles Michel and the Brussels bullies looking for someone to blame, they’ll only have to cast a glance over the other faces on their Microsoft Teams call to identify the culprits.
As wily Viktor Orbán decides on his next move.
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Hungary vetoed EU budget because Brussels forces states to accept immigration, Orban says.
RT.com
18 Nov, 2020 09:10
Prime Minister Viktor Orban explained on Wednesday that Hungary vetoed the European Union’s 2021-2027 budget and post-coronavirus recovery fund because of the “blackmail” that demands mandatory support for immigration.
“After accepting the current proposal, there would be no barrier from tying the disbursement of funds to member states to supporting immigration, and blackmailing the countries that oppose immigration with budgetary sanctions,” Orban said.
Hungary and Poland vetoed both the budget and the recovery plan for economies depressed by the Covid-19 pandemic on Monday, arguing that the budget law included a clause that makes access to money conditional on respecting the rule of law. But the EU’s €1.8 trillion ($2.14 trillion) financial package does not have any specific clauses about immigration.
Orban has long opposed mass immigration, saying that it hurts national and European Christian identity. In March, he urged the EU to stop a new wave of migrants trying to cross the border from Turkey. “As a last resort, as in 2015, there are the Hungarians,” Orban said at the time. “The EU border must be defended … which Hungary will do.”
Hungary’s state secretary for international communications, Zoltan Kovacs, also commented on the veto, noting that it “was not caused by Hungary, but by those who created the conditions leading to it.” New rules linking EU funds to upholding the rule of law breached the EU’s founding treaty and a deal in July not to tie funding to “political conditions,” Kovacs said.
The opposition to the ‘rule of law’ clause by Hungary and Poland had been sparked by the EU’s investigation into the independence of courts, non-governmental organizations, and the media in both countries.
Meanwhile, European Economics Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said on Tuesday that the German EU presidency was working to resolve the dispute quickly. Poland and Hungary had no economic interest in blocking the EU’s plans, he said, because they “are among the biggest beneficiaries” of the EU budget and are also suffering a heavy impact from the coronavirus pandemic.
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Slovenian PM backs Hungary and Poland in row over making EU funding conditional on the rule of law.
RT.com
18 Nov, 2020 11:48
The Prime Minister of Slovenia has written to European Union leaders to voice his objections to draft proposals that would allow Brussels to cut funding to member states considered a threat to the rule of law in their country.
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša sent a letter to European leaders on Tuesday in which he announced his opposition to plans that would make access to funding conditional in the next EU budget.
The budget, which runs from 2021 to 2027, was vetoed on Monday by Hungary and Poland, plunging the 27-nation bloc into a political crisis.
Janša called for a return to the agreement made at the EU summit in July, which was subsequently amended by the rule-of-law criteria.
“Only with the swift completion of what we started in July will we be able to meet high expectations and pave the way for a stronger Europe in the post-pandemic period.”
In his letter addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel, the PM said Slovenia could not accept the use of “discretionary mechanisms” to discipline nations that do not abide by the EU’s “politically motivated criteria.”
“Those of us who have spent part of our lives under totalitarian regimes know that deviation from reality begins when processes or institutions are given names that mean the exact opposite of their essence.”
In the letter, which ran to almost four pages, Janša slammed the EU for double standards. He claimed that, in 2014 the EU institutions had not responded with a single warning when Slovenia “witnessed stolen elections with the help of drastic abuse of state institutions.”
Slovenia’s opposition leaders have distanced themselves from the letter.
The president of the Christian Democrat New Slovenia party and Minister of Defense Matej Tonin said the letter represents the opinion of the prime minister and not the entire government.
The acting leader of the Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia and Minister of Health Tomaž Gantar claimed that the PM’s letter “puts us among the problematic countries we have never belonged to” at a time when Europe needs to be unified to tackle the health crisis.
Last week, Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban also compared the EU’s draft proposal to an approach that might have been taken by the Soviet Union, and slammed the EU’s attempt to punish its member states for not adhering to its own politically motivated criteria.
As a result of the veto by Hungary and Poland, as well as Slovenia’s open opposition, the contents of the next EU budget remain in doubt. In its current state, it includes a total package of €1.8 trillion of funding, which will be the largest ever financed through the EU budget as Europe looks to rebuild after the Covid-19 crisis.
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Hungary & Poland uphold veto on EU budget and recovery fund – Budapest.
RT.com
7 Dec, 2020 16:02
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Monday that Budapest and Warsaw are upholding their veto of the European Union’s budget and a coronavirus recovery fund, though the EU may try to bypass their decision.
Szijjarto made the statement after meeting his Polish counterpart in Brussels on Monday.
“We have affirmed that we stand by each other,” the Hungarian minister said in a Facebook video. “We will not give room to any effort aiming to break up this cooperation.”
After the EU criticized both states for undermining judicial and media independence, Warsaw and Budapest blocked the budget and its linked recovery fund, insisting that the allocation of finances should not be conditional on member states’ respect for the rule of law and democratic norms.
The EU will wait until Tuesday for Poland and Hungary to drop their veto before considering other options, according to media reports. “We need to have an agreement by Hungary and Poland by today or tomorrow at the latest. If we don’t, we will have to move to scenario B,” an EU diplomat told Reuters on Monday.
This back-up plan could include setting up the EU’s €750 billion recovery fund of grants and loans for only 25 member states to support their economies amid the coronavirus crisis, leaving Hungary and Poland out of the mix. The seven-year €1.1 trillion budget would remain blocked, however, though the EU could use a provisional budget in 2021 as a stop-gap.
French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune confirmed late last week that Brussels may leave the two states out of the economic recovery plan. “We will not sacrifice either the recovery or the rule of law,” Beaune told the Journal du Dimanche. “There is no question of reviewing the mechanism which links the two.”
Szijjarto defended the firm stance on Saturday, noting on Facebook that Poles and Hungarians “have fought for our freedom against dictatorships” and supported “European unity.”