European values are non-negotiable
By CAROLINE
DE GRUYTER
BRUSSELS,
TODAY, 08:49
In
Blindness, a famous novel by Portuguese writer José Saramago, a man waiting in
his car at a traffic light suddenly becomes blind.
Later,
inexplicably, the same happens to other inhabitants in the city. Soon public
life gets completely disrupted. Law and order, healthcare, food supply -
everything sinks into chaos and lawlessness.
At the EU
summit, Portuguese prime minister António Costa gave Germany's chancellor
Angela Merkel a present: Blindness by José Saramago. With a message
No one in
the city, Saramago wrote in this dark tale about the degeneration of
civilisation, "knew from now on when the light turned red".
On 17 July,
the first day of the marathon European Council on the multi-annual European
budget and the corona recovery fund, Portuguese prime minister António Costa
gave this Saramago novel as a birthday present to German chancellor Angela
Merkel.
This was a
highly symbolic present.
No one can
lecture the Portuguese on the rule of law. Their country was a military
dictatorship from 1926 to 1974.
Only after
the 'Carnation' revolution in April 1974 was it allowed to become a member of
the European Union: only democracies may join.
If there is
one prime minister in Europe today who perceives the steady erosion of the rule
of law in Hungary, Poland and some other EU countries like a personal slap in
the face, it's probably Portuguese prime minister Costa.
Hungary and
Poland are in the 'club'. They are safe. No one can kick them out. Their
leaders make this very clear - assertively, cynically, turning every word
inside out until it loses all meaning.
For Costa,
the son of a journalist and a writer who was imprisoned three times for
opposing the Salazar government in the 1950s, this must be a bitter experience.
Yet it was
Costa who traveled through Europe and worked the phones last week, telling
other European heads of state and government how stupid it is to link European
subsidies from the EU budget and the recovery fund to the rule of law in
recipient countries.
Northern
European countries kept insisting on 'no democracy, no money'. Initially, this
looked right. How can anyone who cares about European values ever be against
this?
However,
because of that link, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán immediately
threatened to block the entire budget and the fund, worth about €1.8 trillion
for the next seven years.
Costa was
right: the link is stupid. And if anyone could say this, it was him. It's
unfortunate that he only brought it up when Orbán started threatening to use
his veto. Now it looks like Costa only challenged the link because he was
afraid he wouldn't get his money from Brussels.
But Costa's
central argument is important. He says we cannot and should not use European
values, democracy and the rule of law as a bargaining chip in negotiations
about money. Negotiations are about give and take.
If you use
European values in this kind of horse-trading, you make them negotiable - which
they shouldn't be, ever.
Values are
not money
"If we
negotiate about values and money," Costa wrote in the Portuguese newspaper
Público last week, "we do not defend those values but monetise them
instead. They become spare change."
This is why
the European Council, in the end, kicked the can down the road. The European
Commission will table a proposal later this year.
Many were
dismayed. But in matters over which European leaders take unanimous decisions –
meaning, each country has a veto - such as the EU budget, the consequence is
that you put everything into the hands of those violating European values.
Strong
conditionality would empower Orbán to shoot down Europe's entire multi-annual
budget, without any improvement whatsoever in the rule of law in Hungary. This
would be a win-win for Budapest.
All Costa
did was trying to point out that the linkage is useless – not because the rule
of law isn't worth defending but because the linkage rewards the perpetrators
and paralyses the functioning of the EU.
"By
doing this we would, out of naiveté or cynicism, repeat the process in which
Orbán vetoed Frans Timmermans as president of the Commission last year,"
Costa argued.
So, is
there nothing we can do?
Yes, there
is.
First, this
serves as yet another argument for the abolition of national vetos. It makes no
sense that national leaders insist on keeping the veto and criticise the EU for
being too weak to uphold the rule of law. The two issues are directly related.
It is time they acknowledge this.
Second,
until EU decision-making moves to (qualified) majority voting, the EU must rely
on the one existing procedure dealing directly with the rule of law: Article 7
of the Treaty. If countries keep ignoring warnings from Brussels, cases based
on Article 7 will eventually go to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
Those
procedures are, alas, annoyingly laborious and slow. But for now this limited
tool is all we have, so we must make better use of it.
As we have
seen in recent years political pressure from Brussels does not work: countries
refuse to be lectured. Only the court can force them to stop violating the rule
of law.
Hungary has
often taken a step back just before cases come to court. Poland has been
convicted twice. Twice, to avoid sanctions, it has overturned laws clipping the
wings of independent judges.
Is this too
bleak a prospect? Not necessarily.
In
Blindness, Saramago's novel, there is one lady who keeps her eyesight. She,
presumably, made Costa think of Merkel and her role in Europe. It is thanks to
this lady that all the blind, at the end of the book, see the light again and
start stopping for red lights – just like they used to.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário