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The European response to the pandemic crisis is once again unstable. For one thing, as of yesterday, about 90% of the entire loan package to help pay for job-saving measures. leave or recovery support), the so-called SURE (Support to mitigate the risks of unemployment in an emergency), has already received the green light from the European Commission (EC).
On the other hand, the day was overshadowed by the confirmation of the already feared. Hungary and Poland have officially blocked the final approval process for the European bazooka.
The SURE package is worth € 100 billion and proposals have already been made to lend more than € 90.3 billion to 18 countries. Portugal should receive a total of 5.9 billion euros, it has been known since the end of August. Yesterday, the SURE threshold was raised to the aforementioned 90 billion with the approval of the aid line to Ireland, worth 2.5 billion.
But the blockade of Budapest and Warsaw could complicate the accounts and the deadlines. The European Commission and the main institutions involved in this work regretted the decision. Brussels recalled that money is urgent for countries to get out of this crisis, “the most serious since the Second World War.”
The envoys of the governments of Warsaw and Budapest to the negotiations in the Council of the EU considered unacceptable that they could not access the new European funds if they did not comply with the rule of law. This type of condition is said to be an interference by the European Union in its national sovereignties.
At the council meeting, the criterion of respect for the rule of law to access new funds was approved. Until now, only a qualified majority was needed.
That said, it means that the more than 13 billion euros of the Portuguese recovery fund (all the money lost, which does not exacerbate the deficit or the debt) is again at risk.
As Dinheiro Vivo reported on November 7, this type of lockdown was already on the horizon. In this sense, the Portuguese government and the European Commission (EC) are preparing a Plan B so that there is no shortage of money related to European grants in response to a pandemic (the so-called bazooka), non-reimbursable grants from the Recovery Mechanism and Resilience (MRR), where the money will come from to spend on the national plan of the same name.
The Commission calls this “pre-financing” of future subsidies (which have not yet been approved and may be delayed), thus allowing Portugal to receive, in 2021 and without major bureaucracies, around 1425 million euros from the European package to respond to the effects 19 in economics.
Hungary and Poland fight back
Hungary and Poland responded immediately, aborting the agreement to increase the volume of own resources in the European budget, that is, the possibility of going to the debt markets. This measure needed unanimity. I do not pass.
On his Twitter account, Zoltan Kovacs, spokesman for the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán, explained that: “We cannot approve the plan in its current form, linking the rule of law criterion to budget decisions, because it goes against the conclusions. from the summit in July “.
It was at that summit of heads of state, in July, where the budget for the next seven years and the architecture of the Recovery Fund, the European response to the covid-19 pandemic, were approved.
However, in the following weeks, already at the beginning of this month, adjustments to the text were made through an agreement between the German presidency of the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament (EP). This came to foresee a condition that angered Hungary and Poland (and not only): it says that access to European funds is conditioned on the criterion of respect for the rule of law in the recipient countries, a rule that is directly addressed to both states that now blocked the blanket agreement.
Several European leaders at the highest level say that Poland and Hungary have repeatedly violated fundamental rights, actions that are not in line with the status of free European democracies and that do not respect the fundamental Treaties on which the Union is based. European Union.
Sebastian Fischer, spokesman for the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU (which this year is from Germany), confirmed, after a meeting of COREPER on the Budget (Committee of Permanent Representatives) that “in the decision of own resources, the ambassadors of the EU was unable to reach the necessary unanimity to initiate the drafting procedure, due to reservations from two member states. “
“The two member states expressed reservations regarding one element of the package as a whole [a condição que impõe o cumprimento do Estado de Direito], but not to the substance of the agreement “, added.
In a videoconference with businessmen and managers, Valdis Dombrovskis, one of the vice presidents of the European Commission, regretted the veto and warned that the money in question is very urgent to start the recovery. “A swift resolution of this situation is needed. Money is urgently needed for the European recovery,” said the EC leader. “I hope that all parties are aware of their responsibility,” he added.
Frustration
The European Budget Commissioner, the Austrian Johannes Hahn, was frustrated, just after six days had passed since a general political agreement was reached between the Council (governments) and the European Parliament to fatten the Financial Framework 2021-2027 (the skeleton of the European multi-annual budget) up to a record high of 1.8 billion euros.
“I am disappointed that the Member States have not been able to go ahead with the agreement on the Multiannual Financial Framework and the Recovery Fund. I urge the Member States to take their political responsibility and take the necessary steps to finalize the whole package. It is about ideological issues, but about helping our citizens in the worst crisis since World War II, ”Hahn wrote.
If the lockdown continues further and there are new barriers, the new wave of European funds will not be available on January 1, 2021, not even early next year.
The idea is that the new wave of funds will start arriving in countries during the spring of 2021, but even that now seems to be threatened.
Margarida Marques, PS MEP and one of the members of the European budget negotiation team, together with José Manuel Fernandes, PSD MEP, explained that, in any case, there is a part of these funds that can be released if it is to finance expenses . related to the pandemic.
Luís Reis Ribeiro is a journalist for Dinheiro Vivo
