Can the EU cut funding for constitutional sinners?

Should the EU be able to cut subsidies for constitutional sinners like Poland and Hungary? This is the question at issue in a case before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg, which began on Monday. Depending on the outcome of the proceedings, it will be decided whether a new escalation level will be reached in the simmering rule of law dispute in the EU.

The relationship between Brussels and Warsaw is particularly tense at the moment. On Monday, the spokesman for the EU Commission said that the Brussels authority continues to analyze the controversial judgment of the Polish Constitutional Court last Thursday with “due diligence”. The constitutional court ruled that individual parts of EU law violate the constitution.

CSU MP Ferber calls for decisive action

Subsequently, EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen declared that the Commission would “use all powers” to ensure that EU law takes precedence over national law. The CSU MEP Markus Ferber said that the Commission, as the “guardian of the treaties”, was called upon to “fight for European values”.

In Poland meanwhile, tens of thousands took to the streets on Sunday to protest the judgment of the Constitutional Court. Earlier, opposition leader Donald Tusk had called on “everyone who wants to defend European Poland” to participate. In Warsaw alone, according to the organizers, 80,000 to 100,000 people demonstrated for Poland to remain in the EU. The national-conservative government, led by the Law and Justice party (PiS), has meanwhile insisted that a “polexit” is not an option.

In view of the Warsaw ruling, calls for a blocking of EU funding for Poland had become loud. The so-called rule of law mechanism, which has been negotiating before the ECJ since Monday, provides exactly this. Accordingly, payments to individual member states from the EU budget can be suspended as soon as the lack of independence of the judiciary means that the correct use of EU funds can no longer be legally verified.

Politically, this mechanism is already a done deal. At the end of last year, however, the heads of state and government of the EU gave Poland and Hungary the opportunity to sue the rule of law mechanism. This also happened last March; negotiations are now taking place in Luxembourg. Since this is an accelerated procedure, a decision by the ECJ on the claims of Hungary and Poland is conceivable within a few weeks. If the lawsuits of the two countries are dismissed, the EU Commission should then quickly activate the mechanism. For months, the European Parliament has been calling for the new option of reducing subsidies to be used.

The spokeswoman for European policy for the Greens in the Bundestag, Franziska Brantner, demanded that the EU Commission “do not play the game of Hungary and Poland” and must freeze EU aid funds immediately. “The next federal government must defend the basic values ​​of the EU more resolutely, the last one has looked the other way too often in the event of violations,” Brantner told Tagesspiegel.