Debate: Rule of law situation in the European Union and the application of the Conditionality Regulation
Date: WEDNESDAY, 9 JUNE 2021
Speaker: Ryszard Antoni Legutko
Political group: ECR
Country: Germany
Language: EN

Take the so-called rule of law framework. From the very beginning it was obvious that the Treaties disallow such a procedure, if only because it violates the principle of conferral as specified in Article 5. Soon after this framework appeared in 2014, the legal services of the Council of the European Union wrote a devastating critique of the project. What did the Commission and the Parliament do? Nothing. Probably they put the document into the shredder. A couple of years later in 2018, the same legal services presented another critical opinion, even more devastating; the same reaction, silence and the shredder. Even the European Court of Auditors criticised this mechanism and its opinion wound up in the shredder, too. Then the Parliament came up with the rule of conditionality, which in the form proposed by the Parliament, is simply a legal monstrosity, violating almost everything that can be violated.  What it can and probably will amount to we have all heard in the statement of some of the speakers this afternoon, and many of those who follow will probably continue in the same vein. To say that these remarks are being made in complete disregard for the rule of law, as specified in the Treaties, would be an understatement. If anyone wants to know what the contempt for law is like, well, that was it.  The Council introduced some rationality to the mechanism and I can see to my satisfaction that the Commissioner does not want to go beyond what the Treaties allow. I should be satisfied, and in a way I am. But we have heard other statements from other Commissioners in the past with the opposite message, so I’m not sure what the Commission’s ultimate position is. Aren’t you by any chance playing a good cop-bad cop game? This sense of uncertainty which I feel is shared by millions of people in Europe. The Treaties are being strained, reinterpreted at will, twisted. They no longer give protection, but have become the instruments of the ruling majority to strengthen its hegemony. This tendency unfortunately seems to include the Court of Justice. As you might remember, this Parliament launched Article 7 against Hungary after having introduced a last-minute change in the voting procedure, excluding abstentions. This was definitely foul play, and without the change, the anti-Hungarian majority would have lost. This was clearly a breach of Article 354, which explicitly stipulates that all votes cast should be included. But just recently, the Court of Justice intervened in an epoch-making ruling to the effect that abstentions are not to be qualified as votes cast. The ruling is not only an assault on human intelligence. This is law in the service of party politics, but more importantly, this is a sign that for the Court of Justice as well as for other European institutions, anything goes as long as they can have their way.  So what we have seen so far on the condition of the debates in the Parliament and outside it has been a rather depressing spectacle. Commissioner, I wish your statement could mark a change in this abominable practice of a cavalier approach to the Treaties, but something is telling me that such a conclusion may be premature, and considering this Parliament’s plan for the future of Europe, I fear the worst.