[ad_1]
Receive a recommendation from our editors every Friday at 12 noon with the best articles that you can read in their entirety exclusively with your access to F + FAZ.NET.
Instead, the European Commission is now tightening the thumbscrews in coordination with the other countries: according to information from the FAZ, it is working at full steam to put the € 750 billion reconstruction fund into effect, excluding Poland and Hungary. Both countries would leave empty-handed.
Poland would lose 23.1 billion euros and Hungary 6.2 billion euros in subsidies. In relation to economic production, these are large sums. However, above all, the way for the disbursement of aid to the other 25 states would no longer be blocked. Different ways are being tested for this. The aim is to keep Poland and Hungary out of “de jure” or “de facto”.
The preferred model is based on the EU unemployment benefit “Insurance” decided by the states at the beginning of the Crown crisis. Therefore, the aid would be guaranteed by voluntary guarantees from the states rather than directly through the EU budget as provided above.
Poland and Hungary could participate, but of course it is not necessary. Ultimately, it is said that such participation would not make sense to them. In this case, the rule of law mechanism they rejected would be introduced as intended.
This is possible because, unlike the budget and the reconstruction fund, the mechanism does not have to be approved unanimously. Therefore, the fund’s support was linked to compliance with the rule of law.
The Commission is also following the approach of adopting the reconstruction fund excluding Poland and Hungary in the framework of enhanced cooperation. EU treaties explicitly allow multiple states to advance in individual fields. Establishing a debt-financed fund in addition to this is difficult, says the commission.
It is off the table to create the fund as an intergovernmental solution based on the model of the euro rescue fund ESM without Poland and Hungary. The main problem with this solution is that the level of debt of the participating Member States increased.
Cuts, especially in structural aid
However, this would not resolve the dispute over the budgetary framework for 2021 to 2027. Without an agreement, the EU will have to start next year with an emergency budget. One twelfth of the EU budget for 2020 would be available to you per month. However, as there is less money available to finance without a new budgetary framework, also due to the UK’s departure, only € 135-140 billion could flow to the projects promised in 2021 instead of the € 166 billion. Euros expected, according to the commission.
That would also hit Poland and Hungary hard. Because there would be cuts in the structural aid that interest them. Funding commitments for new structural finance projects would even be completely impossible.
If necessary, the Commission could come up with a budget proposal in early 2021 that paves the way for this, he says. Politically, however, there is little will to help Poland and Hungary on this path.
