Poland, Hungary block EU recovery funds
Hungary and Poland blocked a massive recovery package for the European Union on Monday over their opposition to payouts being linked to rule-of-law standards. They are now accused of depriving the bloc of sorely needed funds to revive pandemic-battered economies.
The Hungarian and Polish envoys at an EU ambassadors’ meeting vetoed a proposal to endorse the 1.82-trillion-euro ($2.16 trillion) package, which includes 1.07 trillion euros for the 2021-27 budget and 750 billion euros for a coronavirus recovery fund.
A spokesman for the German presidency of the Council of the European Union said that EU ambassadors could not reach the unanimity required for initiating the written procedure due to reservations expressed by two member states. Germany holds the presidency of the council for the second half of this year.
Hungary and Poland have opposed the rule-of-law mechanism that could see them lose EU subsidies, as they have clashed with Brussels on the issue over the past years.
Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesman for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said his country vetoed the funding package as Orban had warned it would.
“Because we cannot support the plan in its present form to tie rule of law criteria to budget decisions. It runs contrary to the July Council conclusions,” he said in a tweet on Monday, adding that Hungary’s stance was mandated by its parliament.
Burden of responsibility
He said the burden of responsibility rests with those who have given rise to this situation in spite of Hungary’s well-articulated stance.
A Polish government spokesman, quoted by Irish Times, said the country was “open to constructive solutions, as long as they are in line with the European Council conclusions and EU treaties”.
EU leaders who are to meet on Thursday for a video conference on the bloc’s coronavirus response must now find time to tackle the new crisis.
Negotiators from the German presidency of the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament reached an agreement last week for the recovery package, including linking the payouts with a member country’s record on the rule of law. But the deal requires the endorsement of all 27 EU member states and the European Parliament.
Europe is the new epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. The European Autumn Economic Forecast released recently marked down the EU’s economic growth prospects for next year.
It predicts growth of 4.2 percent in 2021 for the 19-member eurozone, down from the 6.1 percent projected in the summer forecast in early July.
“If Viktor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski (the leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party) want to stop the use of these funds for everybody, then they will have to explain that to the millions of workers and business owners, the mayors and students, the researchers and farmers that are counting on the support of these funds,” Manfred Weber, a German politician and leader of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament, said in a statement on Monday.