Rebels put pressure on Brussels

The on­go­ing duel be­tween War­saw and Bu­dapest with Brus­sels has al­ready reached the courts. Poland has gone fur­ther in its chal­lenge, with all-but un­con­di­tional sup­port for Hun­gar­ian pres­i­dent, Vik­tor Orbán. Poland and Hun­gary are both part of the Viseg­rad Group – now known as the “Viseg­rad Rebels” – which also in­cludes the Czech Re­pub­lic and Slo­va­kia, al­though the lat­ter two have in­creas­ingly dis­tanced them­selves due to the deep­en­ing dis­pute be­tween their group part­ners and Brus­sels.

The Eu­ro­pean Union is ex­tremely un­com­fort­able with the in­creas­ingly au­thor­i­tar­ian and xeno­pho­bic poli­cies that Poland and Hun­gary have been pur­su­ing, and has ini­ti­ated legal pro­ceed­ings to try to put a brake on some of their re­cent prac­tices. Mean­while, the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion has given Poland no­tice to pay some 70 mil­lion euros in fines it was is­sued for fail­ing to re­verse an il­le­gal dis­ci­pli­nary regime for judges. Poland has re­sponded, say­ing it will not pay the fine and has crit­i­cised the Com­mis­sion’s ac­tions.

The ten­sion is pal­pa­ble and grow­ing. One of the con­se­quence is that EU au­thor­i­ties have still not given the green light to the post-pan­demic re­cov­ery plans of these coun­tries. Nor are they likely to do so any time soon. This means they will not have ac­cess to EU stim­u­lus funds aimed at re­viv­ing their post-pan­demic economies. Orbán has in­sisted that the ma­noeu­vre against Poland and Hun­gary has no “legal basis” and that the pay­ment of these stim­u­lus funds can­not be de­nied, as they are a loan that the EU part­ners have jointly agreed upon.