Now, the legal guarantee is enough for the Orbán government to renounce the veto, right?

The two problems must be separated

Viktor Orbán also mentioned on this morning’s program that, as indicated in the two-step declaration in Budapest, Hungary and Poland are moving closely on the issue, which means that if something is not acceptable to you, it is not. for the other. He suggested that the Polish government should continue to take Hungary’s position into account.

In this context, it is particularly interesting that a Polish deputy prime minister from a smaller party met with several EU commissioners in Brussels last night. made a completely different statement. In essence, he said that if the rule of law mechanism could no longer be changed and Poland received less money from the EU due to the budget at the end of 2021 and the other 25 Member States were moving forward with the recovery fund, they would rather agree and It is sufficient for Poland to provide a legally binding written guarantee from the Commission on the conditions of application of the mechanism, which will be endorsed by the Heads of State and Government at the EU Summit.

Jaroslaw Gowin literally said:

We have all recognized that in the case of a Polish or Hungarian veto, there would only be a “conditional” budget which, contrary to some voices in the Polish public debate, would not be good for Poland or any other Member State.

Then he also said: “This interpretative declaration could be a clear resolution of the European Council that the rule of law mechanism would not be used to exert undue pressure on Member States in areas other than the proper use of EU funds. “

Compared to the above, Viktor Orbán said this morning: adding a declaration to the rule of law mechanism is not acceptable. He literally said:

The solution for us is to add a statement, …. it will not work, Hungary insists that the two things should be chosen separately.

Very interesting half sentence

After a rigid rejection of the rule of law mechanism, Orbán embarked on a longer explanation, the ending of which is really interesting in terms of veto waivers. He literally said the following during the longest explanation:

“The current framework is that no member state can be forced to do what it does not want by majority decision. And now, in the shadow of the epidemic, there is a Commission immigration proposal that reveals in the most unequivocal way what the European Union wants to do. We want to provide housing, aid and citizenship to 34 million migrants, and we can make a connection between having a proposal that addresses general questions of principle and depriving ourselves of the right to resist, and then pushing forward a proposal that we have always opposed. We see what the game is about, they want to get rid of the negative positions of Hungary and Poland on migration. With a simple majority of votes. That’s what the story is about. “

“Of course it’s about money, the rule of law, but it’s not! At the heart of it all is that, unlike the current situation where we cannot be forced to accept certain things, we are now creating legislation that can oblige us and in the end we fight in vain, now for 5-6-7 years against making Hungary a country of immigrants,… .. in vain we said that we do not want to become a country of immigrants, now suddenly They find a legal instrument that, citing something else, but they will use it And it will happen, I know them quite well, I have been sitting among them for more than 10 years. He then declared:

You can tell me what you want, I only believe in one thing about legal guarantees.

This is exactly the type of guarantee that the Commission intends to offer.

As we write at night:

This legal guarantee would serve precisely to assure the two governments that the mechanism will not be used to pressure migration differences.

Therefore, this last quote suggests that Yes, Orban has left a loophole for such a legal guarantee to be acceptable to him and to withdraw from the veto. However, he did not comment more clearly on this issue and made clear on several occasions that he wanted to separate the mechanism from the start of the two EU budgets.

Isn’t the agreement urgent?

However, he also spoke about the fact that he does not see any problem if Member States agree to the 2021-2027 budget only late and therefore the EU budget for 2021 derived from it starts only on an emergency basis (based in the 2020 budget, twelfths per month). in the form of disbursements).

If we do not agree now in January, we will accept it later.

He declared. He also said that “there is no problem here”, although he acknowledged that the monthly disbursement from Brussels “was not convenient”. However, he asserted, again against the aforementioned Polish signal, that Hungary would not lose money on this emergency budget either, that “money cannot be taken away” and that the only question is when the money will be disbursed.

As we have written, if the 21-day window is closed before December 7, there is no unanimous agreement on the framework budget adopted by the 27 Member States for the EU and, therefore, no formal agreement can be reached between the EU institutions on the resulting 2021 budget, then the law requires a transition to an emergency solution in the budget. This means proceeding on the basis of the 2020 budget, paying one-twelfth of a month for programs for which new sectoral legislation has been adopted (there are quite a few, such as recovery funds and direct R&D and Erasmus programs from Brussels). none).

Given that EU payments from Member States are also lower due to Brexit and their GNI-based payments due to the crisis, for a full year Payments from the EU budget could be between € 25-30 billion less than without this emergency. The EU would move forward with this emergency solution until a new seven-year framework budget is adopted with the unanimous approval of all 27 member states. This can happen any time in 2021 a year from now, after which the EU can move fairly quickly to the new way it operates with the normal 2021-2027 budget.

If the total amount of the budget to be approved in 2021-2027 remained at € 1.074 billion (at the 2018 price level), we could only talk about the fact that Hungary and other Member States would not lose money either, because they would receive it. only in time, say around 2022. money that has not been disbursed since the beginning of 2021. If, on the contrary, over time or for political reasons, Member States unanimously agree on a smaller framework budget, the current delay would mean a real loss of resources for Hungary.

Source of cover image: Alexandros Michailidis, European Union, Council of European Media Council