The President of the European Commission said that decisions will be made in the near future to allocate 137 billion euros to Poland. These are funds that were frozen by the bloc due to the policies of the previous Polish government, which was controlled by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party.
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Ursula von der Leyen also announced that about 1.4 billion euros will go to farmers protesting against duty-free imports of Ukrainian products to Europe.
Today, Prime Minister Denis Szmigal and a group of Ukrainian ministers will be on the border between Ukraine and Poland.
Vladimir Zelensky announced this at a press conference. He added that he does not know whether Polish officials will be there, because it is their personal decision.
Background
On February 16, 2022, the Court of Justice of the European Union rejected the claims of Poland and Hungary to cancel the fines imposed by the European Commission due to non-compliance by member states with the principle of the rule of law.
Poland and Hungary challenged a December 2020 European Parliament and Council ruling allowing financial aid to be suspended to member states if their situation threatens the rule of law.
Warsaw and Budapest argued that the decision of the European Parliament and the Council had no legal basis in the EU Treaty, and the suspension of financial assistance was an excess of Brussels’ powers. The position of the European Parliament and the Council of the EU was supported by the European Commission, as well as Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, France and Sweden.
The EU Court of Justice accepted that the mechanism for blocking EU financial assistance can be activated if there are “reasonable grounds for believing that a Member State has not only violated a principle of international law, but that such violation seriously threatens the proper management of the EU’s finances.”
The mechanism for suspending funding must be approved by the European Parliament, but they still supported this idea. In this case, Poland may lose up to 75 billion euros in financial assistance, and Hungary – up to 22.5 billion euros. Even earlier, the European Commission blocked a tranche of 36 billion euros for Poland and 7 billion for Hungary to restore the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The European Commission believes that the rule of law is being violated in Poland and Hungary. In the case of Poland, we are talking about judicial reform, which, according to the EU, led to the deprivation of the independence of judges, and in the case of Hungary – oppression of the rights of the LGBT+ community and a migration policy that contradicts the pan-European one.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.