Revealed by Viktor Orbán’s Polish ally: In fact, the Hungarian Prime Minister wrote the compromise proposal instead of the Germans

A key phrase was spoken

If we had not discussed it, if we had not been able to pin down exactly the effects of our agreement and then turn them into guidelines for the European Union, we would have been incomparably less effective.

– this is the key phrase that Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the ruling Justice and Justice (PiS) party, deputy prime minister, former ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, said in an interview with Gazeta Polska magazine and TV Republic on Friday.

The transcript of the interview, published on the website niezalezna.pl and reviewed by the PAP news agency, confirms the information already indicated by the Portfolio on Thursday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked Viktor Orbán and the leaders of the Polish government ( Mateusz Morawiec and Jaroslaw Kaczynski) that formulate your needs precisely in writing, as this will be the backbone of the European Council conclusions on this matter. We know that the text was mainly written by the Hungarian prime minister’s closer environment, in close consultation with the Poles, and after this material was written, it really began to pave the way for the document between the Western European actors Merkel and , in the background, he verified it with the Council’s Legal Service. also the content from which the final approval also came.

The chronology was different

With this earlier statement, Kaczynski practically revealed this to the outside world as well. Thus he revealed how the 4-page German newspaper was born in the background, which could be seen from the outside as if it had been prepared by the Germans in search of a compromise and that the Hungarian-Polish couple agreed at the last minute and then had some “. pouting ”after the other 25 do.

On the contrary, the leaders of the Hungarian government and, secondly, the Polish government, clarified their needs to the end, apparently in close consultation with the Germans and the legal service. then the Germans were a bit more likely to adapt.

And then the Germans put pressure on others, especially Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who was initially long, who also sought the opinion of the Council Legal Service, who only came forward on Thursday evening and therefore had to to readjust the order a bit at the EU summit. Then, as soon as the information that reassured Rutte was published in principle, the whole deal passed, supposedly “surprisingly quickly”, in 22 minutes, following close consultation from the European Council on Thursday night. And since the Hungarian-Polish couple achieved their every wish with the material described in the document (this has since been discovered in official communications from both governments), there was no doubt that they would renounce their budget veto.

This whole panorama is even more “colored” by the information heard by the Portfolio and written by Bruxinfo than indeed, Charles Michel, President of the European Council of Heads of State and Government, has been concerned about the rule of law since the summer; and I wanted to avoid the danger of being really concerned about the EU Treaty. However, as the European Parliament was so tense about the matter that it did not want to leave aside any of the letters of a strict mechanism of the rule of law, Michel had to find a different solution.

And this concern was met with criticism from the governments of Hungary and Poland that had been increasingly voiced for months. According to this the mechanism creates a parallel with the rule of law procedure provided for in article 7, which, on the other hand, is not included in the Treaty and can only be modified unanimously, although a qualified majority would be sufficient to adopt the mechanism (regulation) and future sanctions, so that the right of the “cornered Member States could be violated “.

So who gave how much?

In general, therefore, as far as we know, it has happened that

there were legal concerns, so it would have been advisable to postpone the applicability of the regulation at least until the court’s ruling was delivered, to which were added the demands for clarification and reduction from Hungary and Poland.

It is not in itself a concession to the Hungarian-Polish couple to demand the regulation of the rule of law, because it is a legal instrument for all Member States for all regulations. And it is only apparently a huge concession that the Commission cannot even apply the mechanism until trial, as there are legal concerns there, so it is a more cautious attitude on the part of the Commission.

Meanwhile, in order to alleviate legal concerns, it is (also) clearly separated from the Article 7 procedural focus of this re-budgeted mechanism. Due to the above legal concerns, the EU’s top management was also a partner in the separation and even Merkel highlighted at her press conference on Friday that this was one of the important results of the 4-page document. Furthermore, Kaczynski said in the previous interview that he could clearly write on the paper with Viktor Orbán that cases perceived as sovereignty could not be sanctioned in the budget mechanism, they are part of the Article 7 procedure and he considers this a great achievement with budget money of the EU. .

Therefore, the actual concessions to the governments of Hungary and Poland were as follows:

• They were able to specify the scope of the mechanism to the extreme, turning into a closed list the conditions under which the mechanism could actually be activated (or where there was a risk of a violation). Therefore, it has been clarified that procedures can only be initiated in cases that are sufficiently related to the EU budget. Therefore, not for political reasons, constitutional debates, the media and education, although the main political forces of the EP would also have liked to do so, and this was indicated in the mechanism by the last of the 7 clauses, the ruling deliberately vague. understandable. (In several videos Manfred Weber, leader of the PE Group in the European People’s Party, also listed independent media as one of the areas where the Commission can apply the sanction if it detects damage, but this seemed more like an imaginary plan. And with a 4-page clarification, it was finally decided that retaliation for EU money could not be used for such matters).
• With the 4-page German document, the question of money for 2014-2020 has been clearly removed from the picture, that is, these 11 billion euros, which the Commission has not yet disbursed to Hungary from that cycle, are they can disburse regardless of the legal situation.

Cover image source: MTI / Prime Minister’s Press Office / Benko Vivien Cher. Image released by the Prime Minister Press Office meeting of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (j), Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Polish ruling party chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski (b), in Warsaw on December 8, 2020 .