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VBefore the EU summit on Thursday and Friday, the governments of Poland and Hungary reaffirmed that they did not want to accept a link between the 1.8 trillion euro package consisting of the EU budget and the development fund of the European crown and a rule of law mechanism. Both Central and Eastern European countries had threatened to veto them. On Tuesday afternoon, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán surprisingly made his second visit in eight days to Warsaw.
Gerhard gnauck
Political Correspondent for Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania based in Warsaw.
In the meantime, however, the Polish government seems to be looking for potential compromises. Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Gowin told the newspaper on Tuesday that the way out could be the adoption of an “interpretative declaration” by the mechanism. It should prevent the mechanism “from being exploited in the future to exert arbitrary pressure on more and more new EU countries.”
As for the possible content of such a statement, he said, not himself, but part of the political class in Poland feared that the country could one day come under pressure due to the repeated advances of the EU institutions on the rights of the people. LGBT. to change your family law. That must be discarded “in black and white”. “Our constitution defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. For us it would be unacceptable for EU funds to be used as a lever to achieve constitutional change. “
Budapest is pushing for a common line
Gowin also recalled that his political opponent Donald Tusk, as President of the EU Council in 2018, spoke out against linking EU finances to a new rule of law mechanism. “It’s a shame that the other EU politicians didn’t listen to him at the time. Since then, the political dispute in Poland has intensified ”. Warsaw had never objected to linking EU funds to transparent rules for their use. Poland is considered a leader in the Community in the transparent and lawful use of EU funds, while Hungary and the Czech Republic are worse off on this issue.
To keep Poland in line with the veto issue, Budapest repeatedly refers to the reinsurance formula that was worked out after a meeting between Prime Ministers Mateusz Morawiecki and Viktor Orbán in late November: According to this, none of The two governments will agree to a resolution that is unacceptable to the other. it is. Orbán is communicating that it does not necessarily depend on an EU budget decision before the end of the year.
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On Monday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó stated that Hungary and Poland “hold on and do not allow any intention to break our cooperation.” Both countries have the right to veto and further negotiations are needed to reach a compromise. “We see opportunities for an agreement, because both countries are strong defenders of the rule of law,” continued Szijjártó. But EU funds and the rule of law have nothing to do with each other and should not be linked. Orbán had rejected possible “statements” as a compromise in a radio interview: it would be like “putting a little note in a bulletin board with a thumbtack, that won’t work.”
The initiative of the previous presidents
Political figures from both countries have warned against the veto. The three living former presidents of Poland, Lech Wałęsa, Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Bronisław Komorowski, appealed in an open letter to the national-conservative PiS government and President Andrzej Duda to renounce their position on the EU budget dispute. A veto would be understandable if the planned budget package was unfavorable or unfair for Poland, the letter said. But that is not the case. Rather, the Mateusz Morawiecki government negotiated and accepted the budget. Now it should not “blackmail the other EU members with a veto”.
Meanwhile, a Polish association of family businesses has asked the government not to veto it, but to focus on “solidarity and cooperation with EU countries.” At the same time, many municipalities in both countries, led by the opposition mayors of the capitals, Gergely Karácsony and Rafał Trzaskowski, have issued an emergency call: if Hungary and Poland were excluded from aid from the EU Crown because of their budget veto, the Commission should directly finance Paga to municipalities. In Poland, polls reveal an ambiguous picture: on the one hand, about 80 percent of the population is happy to join the EU. However, when asked how the government should enforce Poland’s interests, sometimes more and sometimes less than half of the citizens are in favor of a “tough stance” towards Brussels, according to the question.
Orbán made a concrete advance in another area. He wrote to the President of the European People’s Party (EPP), Manfred Weber, that the EPP’s membership in Orbán’s Fidesz party had been suspended by mutual agreement, but what that meant for the membership of Fidesz MPs was never fully discussed. in the PPE group. He suggested that Fidesz solve the resulting communication problems by forming a parliamentary group with the EPP, as was once done with the British Conservatives. The reason for the letter is the exclusion motions against Fidesz deputy Tamás Deutsch, who grossly insulted Weber by indirectly accusing him of Gestapo methods. This incident will be negotiated in the PPE Group on Wednesday.
