OPINION
Time to call Hungary and Poland’s bluff
Budapest and Warsaw are playing a weak hand in
pledging to veto EU budget and recovery plan.
BY R.
DANIEL KELEMEN
November
19, 2020 2:38 pm
R. Daniel
Kelemen is professor of political science and law at Rutgers University.
https://www.politico.eu/article/time-to-call-hungary-and-polands-bluff/
This week’s
headlines have screamed that Hungary and Poland vetoed the European Union’s
€1.8 trillion multi-annual budget and recovery plan package. In fact, they have
done nothing of the sort.
Monday’s
negotiations — over a new tool to suspend EU funding to countries that flout
the bloc’s norms regarding the rule of law — took place between diplomats. The
final decision will most likely not be taken until the General Affairs Council
meeting on December 8. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Polish Prime
Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s veto threat might still be a bluff. And it is a
bluff the other EU leaders must call.
In this
game of high stakes poker, sequencing is key. The adoption of the rule-of-law
regulation requires only a qualified majority vote in the Council of the
European Union, which is why EU diplomats were able to vote to approve it
Monday over the outraged objections of Hungary and Poland.
The reason
Warsaw and Budapest have leverage is because the German government, in its role
at the helm of the rotating EU presidency, has so closely linked the regulation
to the passage of the EU’s next seven-year budget and the recovery package
(both of which require unanimous approval by all governments).
But if the
Council confirms Monday’s vote and formally adopts the rule-of-law regulation
by qualified majority, then it becomes a fait accompli. At which point, Poland
and Hungary will quickly lose their incentive to block the EU budget.
Of course,
Orbán and Morawiecki must realize they are playing a weak hand, so why are they
staking so much on it? Why are they alienating so many other member governments
by threatening to hold up the funds they so desperately need?
Most
likely, they are using this dispute to send a powerful warning shot to the
European Commission and to leaders in the Council. While they may not be able
to prevent the rule-of-law regulation from being adopted, they are sending a
signal as to what they will do if the regulation is ever actually triggered
against them. In essence, the message is: If you ever dare to suspend our
funds, we will grind the EU to a halt, vetoing anything and everything that
requires unanimity in the Council.
The entire
episode serves as a reminder of the autocracy trap the EU has landed itself in.
For 10 years, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) has defended Orbán
as he consolidated the EU’s first autocratic member government. Even today,
Germany’s Christian Democrats continue to defend the Hungarian prime minister
and block the expulsion of his party from the EPP.
The EPP has
protected Orbán for political gain — to ensure it remains the largest and most
powerful bloc in the EU. But this week its pet autocrat turned against his
long-time protectors, threatening the pandemic recovery plan championed by the
EPP’s de facto leader German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
By failing
to stand up to Orbán years ago, EU leaders — in particular those in the EPP —
enabled him to consolidate a hybrid authoritarian regime inside the EU. Orbán’s
success inspired other aspiring autocrats, including Poland’s de facto leader
Jarosław Kaczyński, by demonstrating that they could flout the EU’s fundamental
values while continuing to receive its generous subsidies.
And while
both countries have been subject to so-called Article 7 proceedings, the
mechanism in the Treaties that could strip such regimes of their voting rights,
EU leaders have failed to press forward with the process, leaving them with a
seat at the table from which they can wreak havoc.
If European
leaders want to escape this autocracy trap, they must begin by standing up
forcefully to regimes that try to hold the EU hostage. They must call Orbán and
Morawiecki’s bluff and press ahead with the rule-of-law conditionality
regulation.
After
forcing these rogue regimes to climb down, the EPP must show that there is a
political price to pay for such blatant defiance of EU norms by finally
expelling the Orbán regime from their party — and by denouncing the autocratic
practices of the Hungarian and Polish regimes.
Only once
the EU demonstrates the resolve to defend democracy and the rule of law can it
begin to escape the trap that its years of appeasement have created.
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