15 August 2024
The Price of Equality
Israel’s long-standing debate over ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva students conscription has reached a critical juncture in June 2024. The Israeli Supreme Court not only declared the absence of a legal basis for a broad and overall exemption for Yeshiva students but also introduced a remedy that I claim might be controversial: the suspension of state funding for Yeshivas whose students are subject to conscription but refuse to comply with it. This marks a significant shift in the Court’s approach to enforcing equality in military service and the rule of law. Continue reading >>
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21 December 2023
Same, Same but Different?
The Commission’s decision to release a significant amount of EU money is a testament to some serious pitfalls in the mechanism, which governs the unblocking of frozen EU funds. To recall, Hungary’s endowments are blocked via two different channels, based on two different conditionality criteria, which have some overlapping points. Both prescribe reforms to preserve the independence of the judiciary, which according to the Commission’s justification has been successfully accomplished by Hungary. The Commission has, however, never published a detailed plan that would attach a specific amount to be released to every sufficiently satisfied conditionality criterion. In this blog post, I showcase that the overlap between the two conditionality mechanisms and the absence of a robust ex-ante blueprint for releasing frozen funds make the unblocking process highly obscure. This lack of transparency both decreases the efficiency and robustness of conditionality, and increases the tendency for inter-institutional conflicts. Continue reading >>
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14 November 2022
Are Hungary’s EU Funds Being Cut (or Not)?
The news about whether Hungary will receive EU funds (or not) these days is confusing. One day, we hear that the European Commission is proposing to lower the boom on Hungary by cutting a large chunk of its Cohesion Funds under the general EU budget. The next day, we hear that the Commission is nearing an agreement to approve Hungary’s Recovery Plan in order to greenlight the release of funds. Is the Commission using or surrendering its financial leverage to require that the Hungarian government honor the rule of law? Will the Hungarian government negotiate its way out of funding cuts by really loosening its autocratic grip on power, or would any reform be illusory? Continue reading >>07 November 2022
With or Without Hungary
By December 2022, the Council must vote on the Commission's proposal to withdraw EU budgetary funds from Hungary under the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation. Without a legal basis for its exclusion, Hungary will cast its vote on that proposal. Obviously, the participation of a Member State in a vote that decides on the consequences of its own rule of law violations seems paradoxical. There should be a general Treaty rule that prevents a Member State from voting in the Council when their own alleged misconduct is at stake. Continue reading >>
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12 July 2022
Hungary, Poland and the “Community of Fate”
In February 2022, the ECJ delivered a ruling in cases brought by Hungary and Poland against the European Parliament and Council. Not only did the ruling uphold the regime of conditionality for the protection of the EU budget; it also entered into the domain of European constitutional identity. Instead of undermining the European commitment to the rule of law, Poland and Hungary may have inadvertently consolidated the place of rule of law in the heart of EU identity. Continue reading >>
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11 July 2022
Will the Commission Throw the Rule of Law Away in Hungary?
The Hungarian government is publicly saying that it is nearing a deal with the European Commission to unlock the Recovery Funds that have been withheld because the Commission has not yet approved Hungary’s plan for spending those funds. Apparently, Hungary has agreed to four conditions that will allow the €7bn worth of grants and about €8bn in low-interest loans to be approved. But if those are any indication of the price that the European Commission will extract for comprehensive violation of the rule of law, the European Commission is making a colossal mistake. Continue reading >>
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16 February 2022
No More Excuses
Sitting as a full court, due to the exceptional importance of the case, the Court of Justice has dismissed the annulment actions brought by the Hungarian and Polish governments against the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation. A non-exhaustive account of the main substantive issues addressed by the Court. Continue reading >>
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25 February 2021
The EU Parliament’s Abdication on the Rule of Law (Regulation)
To paraphrase a previous blog entry by Scheppele, Pech and Kelemen, if the The Decline and Fall of the European Union is ever written, historians will conclude that not only the EU’s two key intergovernmental institutions – the European Council and the Council – should bear the greatest responsibility for the EU’s demise, but also the EU Parliament. Indeed, by failing to challenge the legality of the EUCO’s December conclusions encroaching upon its own prerogatives, the EU Parliament might have just become an enabler of the ongoing erosion of the rule of law across the Union. Paradoxically, it did so after relying on incomplete and partial opinion of its own legal service advising the Parliament to trade the respect of the rule of law away for political convenience. Continue reading >>01 February 2021
In the EU, it’s the Rule of Law. In Poland, it’s Unconstitutional?
The Polish Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro, in his capacity as Prosecutor General, wants to apply to the Polish Constitutional Tribunal to have the EU regulation connecting the rule of law with the suspension of EU funds declared inconsistent with the Polish constitution. Why is the member of a government that has recently consented to adopting the regulation, now going to fight it? And are there any grounds for doing so? Continue reading >>
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30 December 2020
Conditionality Mechanism: What’s In It?
As from 1 January 2021 the Regulation on a general regime of conditionality for the protection of the Union budget will become applicable. A lot has been said about the outcome of the negotiation process of this new regulation for which all parties involved claimed victory, as it is usually the case once an agreement is reached. We would like to take this as an opportunity to evaluate the outcome from the personal perspective of two people engaged in the process of the negotiations at opposite sides – the European Parliament on the one side and the Council of the EU on the other side. Continue reading >>
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