On the last Tuesday in Brussels, at a meeting of the EU Council on General Affairs attended by ministers for European affairs from individual member states, representatives of Poland and Hungary blocked a draft of conclusions concerning the so-called mechanism of the rule of law.

The conclusions are prepared by the Finnish Presidency. The introduction of the aforementioned mechanism of the rule of law was proposed by the European Commission last autumn as a result of pressure from European parliamentarians from the two largest factions, Christian Democrats and Socialists, including those from Poland from the Platform and the Left.

The aim is to link the disbursement of funds from the future EU multiannual budget for 2021-27 to individual Member States’ compliance with the rule of law, as defined very generally in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union.

It should be remembered that the European Commission, despite strenuous efforts to propose clear criteria for establishing generalised deficiencies in the field of the rule of law in the Member States, has unfortunately not established such criteria.

In this situation, the margin of discretion in this area will be vast, with the risk of Brussels punishing ‘disliked’ governments and not punishing those ‘liked’.

A serious doubt on this matter was also expressed by the opinion of the European Court of Auditors (ECA) in August 2018, which stated that “the regulation leaves the Commission a very wide margin of discretion in this procedure”.

It is therefore entirely appropriate that representatives of the Polish and Hungarian Governments have blocked the conclusions on this matter that are being prepared for the next December Council meeting, although it is likely that this matter will return to the agenda repeatedly, in view of the fact that work on the budget for the years 2021-27 will only end, as all the evidence indicates, during the German Presidency in the second half of next year.

Tłum. K.J.