Democracy in the European Union is not doing well. That is the conclusion of an annual survey that the European Commission has carried out. “It is a report designed to verify the power of the powerful,” said Commissioner Jourová. In recent days there have been busy political discussions about the text.
The initial presentation was postponed several times and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán became so angry at the mention of his country at the beginning of this week that he demanded the immediate dismissal of Jourová.
It says: “This is a preventive report. We warn to avoid using heavy artillery, such as Article 7, whereby a member state can be deprived of the right to vote.”
The report assesses countries on four criteria: whether the judiciary is independent enough, whether there is corruption, whether there is sufficient freedom for the media and whether the elections were fair.
Soul of the collaboration
The concerns are mainly about Poland and Hungary, but countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and Slovakia are also not doing well, according to the European Commission. Furthermore, freedom of the press in Spain is regularly at stake and corruption in Malta has still not been reduced after the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017.
The report on the state of the rule of law was issued at the instigation of the European Parliament. D66 Member of Parliament Sophie in’t Veld, one of the initiators, is satisfied that the first ‘rule of law APK’ has now been published.
“This is not a technical report, this is about the soul of European cooperation. Are we turning a blind eye while the Union is being affected from within by autocratic concrete rot or are we openly calling each other to account?”
At GroenLinks, they want the next ‘inspection’ to cover more subjects. “I am thinking of the rights of minority groups, but also the rights of civil society organizations,” says MP Tineke Strik.
The dock
Hungary and Poland are so angry about the report that they threaten to block the discussion on the corona recovery fund. In July, EU leaders agreed that there would be a pot of 750 billion euros for countries that are in financial trouble because of the crisis. At the insistence of the Netherlands, among others, it was said that cuts can be made if countries do not adhere to the principles of the rule of law.
The European Parliament wants that text to be worded more sharply, to the dismay of Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán in particular. He wants to talk about the issue again at the EU summit in Brussels in the coming days and threatens to block the corona fund if his country remains in the dock.
Praise for the Netherlands
The Netherlands is also being scrutinized. There is a lot of praise for the independent judicial system that is described as high quality. The independence of the media is also praised.
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