The European Parliament will denounce the Commission before European justice for unfreezing funds to Hungary

The institutional shock has already been served. The European Parliament will bring to the EU Justice the decision of the European Commission to unfreeze 10.2 billion euros of community funds that it had suspended to Hungary due to the drift of the rule of law. The decision was made this Thursday by the president of the European Parliament, the conservative Roberta Metsola, after meeting with the presidents of the institution’s political groups and with the endorsement of the Legal Affairs Committee, which last Monday had already shown itself in favor of filing a lawsuit against the Executive led by fellow Christian Democrat Ursula von der Leyen.

Just on the eve of the heads of State and Government meeting in the last European Council of 2023 that the Hungarian Prime Minister threatened to block, the Commission unfrozen part of the money from the Hungarian Cohesion Funds paralyzed for violating the European charter of Fundamental rights. To reach this moment, Brussels and Budapest were negotiating for a long year and the Magyar Government took some steps in the direction demanded by the Union institutions. However, the timing of events in December raised many suspicions. Even more so if one takes into account that the Hungarian Prime Minister did not later block that summit.

That decision caused the plenary session of the European Parliament to consult the Legal Affairs Committee last January if it was appropriate to denounce the Community Executive. The approved motion said that the European Parliament “regrets and reaffirms its deep concern about this decision to consider that it is fulfilled […] with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU with regard to judicial independence” and demanded to analyze “the legality of the decision.” And this parliamentary commission this Monday decided to recommend that President Metsola present the lawsuit.

The last word corresponded to the Maltese conservative, who this Thursday met with the presidents of the different parliamentary groups, to whom she informed of her decision to follow the advice of presenting the lawsuit. After this decision, the European Parliament will hold another debate on the situation in Hungary and the role of its prime minister.

With this decision, Parliament climbs another step in the battle it maintains against the ultra-conservative Government of Viktor Orbán. MEPs have come to support a motion that describes Hungary as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy” and has accused it of not being a full democracy. He then demanded from the Council that, due to its repeated attacks on European values and the rule of law, Hungary cannot preside over the Council of the EU, something it must do in the second half of this year. Before all this, the European Parliament had launched article 7, the procedure by which a Member State can receive the maximum punishment from the European institutions, the suspension of the right to vote. Again, the reason was the Orbán regime’s attacks on the rule of law.

Precisely these attacks are the reason why Hungary still has some 21 billion euros corresponding to Cohesion Funds and the recovery plan frozen by the Executive of the Union and the Council of the EU. Until last December, the Commission had blocked all Cohesion Fund resources, some 22 billion, for not complying with the minimum standards of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. He specifically reproached him for having undermined the independence of justice, the attack on LGTBI minorities, the violation of the principle of academic freedom in universities and the deterioration of the right to asylum. After more than a year of negotiating between Brussels and Budapest, which has had to make several reforms, the Executive chaired by Ursula von der Leyen unlocked 10.2 billion last December of the part corresponding to judicial independence. And that step is what has caused the institutional clash between the Commission and Parliament.

However, Budapest still has to do more reform if it wants to receive the other 10.8 billion euros from Cohesion Funds plus about 10,000 more from the recovery plan and the RepowerEU program.

This is not the first time that the European Parliament has threatened to take this step because of Hungary. He already gave it in 2021, when he demanded that Von der Leyen freeze money to the Ultra Government through the conditionality mechanism, a tool available to the Commission to stop the delivery of resources to a country when it detects that there is a risk to the budget. community, since one of Hungary’s most serious problems is its poor fight against corruption. The Commission finally activated the conditionality mechanism and there was no claim before the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU).

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