The EU still has not completely sorted out its messy post-divorce relationship with Britain — but it has already been plunged into another major crisis.
This time the 27-member union is being tested as Poland and Hungary block passage of its budget for the next seven years and an ambitious package aimed at rescuing economies ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their objection? A new “rule-of-law mechanism” that would allow the bloc to deny funds to countries that breech democratic norms — something that Poland and Hungary have been accused of doing for years.
EU member had planned to share the lessons learned in the first year of the pandemic and discuss a strategy to prevent a third wave of infections in the first months of next year, as well as take the temperature of post-Brexit trade talks.
However, this week Warsaw and Budapest — now with the support of Slovenia — blocked the adoption of the bloc’s combined 1.8 trillion euros (US$2.1 trillion) post-virus recovery plan and long-term budget.
The nationalist governments accuse their EU partners of mounting a power grab by tying the disbursement of EU funds to respect for Brussels’ view on the rule of law and European values.
“It will be the elephant in the room,” one senior European diplomat said.
The plan to tie EU funds to the rule of law, strongly defended by the European Parliament and several member states, including France and the Netherlands, could be passed by a qualified majority of members.
However, under EU procedure members need to give unanimous backing to a plan to allow the EU to raise funds to finance its 750 billion euros recovery plan and the 1 trillion euros 2021-2027 budget that follows it.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that a “European oligarchy” was trying to bully weaker EU members, while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called the plan “blackmail” against member states opposed to immigration.
There is exasperation in Brussels that governments receiving large net contributions from Europe spend so much time and political capital opposing reform efforts.
No breakthrough was expected from yesterday’s three-hour meeting.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS