The Hungarian authorities refuse to approve the €750 billion package of assistance to the EU economy affected by the coronavirus pandemic due to the new rules for the distribution of subsidies depending on the country's compliance with the principles of the rule of law. This was reported on Thursday by Reuters.
“Hungary has said it wants to deal with the rule of law before making a decision,” said one of the agency's sources.
The heads of state and government of the EU countries during the July 17-21 summit in Brussels approved the final compromise version of the seven-year EU budget plan in the amount of €1,074.3 billion for the period from 2021 to 2027 and an extra-budgetary fund for the recovery of the EU economy at the level of €750 billion.
At the same time, the observance of the rule of law by the EU countries became for the first time a decisive criterion for the distribution of budgetary expenditures between the countries of the European Community. Now the amount of subsidies from the budget and the EU recovery fund is directly related to the country's compliance with the basic principles of democracy. The initial version of the final document assumed an automatic reduction in payments to the country, which the European Commission would incriminate in non-compliance with European values, however, at the suggestion of the President of the European Council Charles Michel, the mechanism for monitoring its compliance was radically relaxed — this issue will be discussed at EU summits. In the course of the negotiations, Poland, Hungary, and a number of other states of Eastern Europe spoke out against the introduction of a legally prescribed condition for countries to observe the rule of law (as estimated by Brussels).
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