by Domen Mezeg
On social networks, Prime Minister Janez Janša responded to the intrusion into the internal affairs of the EU by multibillionaire and financial speculator George Soros, who – from the land of the »american dream« – once again taught European leaders, that they should not accept compromise on the European budget and the reconstruction fund and ensure the functioning of the »rule of law«. As the speculator expectedly wrote in his short message on social media, Hungary and Poland are arrogantly threatening the fundamental values of the EU.
»Do not intrude on the EU and Europe, please. Your dirty money for so-called NGOs is a major source of conflict on the continent, as it destroys trust between people and democracy. One Brexit was enough. The EU needs recovery and stability. Chancellor Angela Merkel has done a good job,« said Prime Minister Janez Janša in response to the inciting note of financial speculator George Soros, who once again got involved in things that have absolutely nothing to do with him.
However, the compromise on the budget reached by the Union with the two countries, he believes, reflects the mistaken belief that this threat can easily be circumvented. The speculator once again sold his old »rotten courgettes«, this time in his article entitled »The Costs of Merkel’s Surrender to Hungarian and Polish Extortion« published on the online media Project Syndicate. His innate verbal »reflux« to a successful European summit was indispensable, as a successful, harmonious and united EU has never been his »intimate option«.
As Soros whines in his »essay«, German Chancellor Angela Merkel worked under enormous pressure to prevent the Hungarian and Polish vetoes from adopting the budget and the recovery fund. He also states that the compromise she has reached with Hungary and Poland is the worst of the options. We really wonder why Soros left his native Hungary in his early youth and ventured out into the wide world. This, in his opinion, a catastrophic situation, he could successfully solve on his own in his native homeland, Hungary, as a politician or later as an MP in Brussels.
Soros goes on to say that the EU is facing an existential threat, and that the European leadership even dares to agree to some kind of compromise. According to him, both Hungarian and Polish ruling policies seriously threaten the values on which the EU is built. He also says that this is just one of the risks that the EU is already facing. He understands Merkel’s »indulgence« as a result of her fatigue due to many years of service and approaching retirement, while Emmanuel Macron faces other problems on the French political scene. Soros also accuses Orban of widespread corruption, which would allegedly be revealed by accepting the »rule of law«.
Soros says the deal reached at the Brussels summit is ugly
Orban’s wealth at the expense of the EU and the Hungarian nation is, he believes, the fat that drives the wheels of his regime. In his opinion, the adopted declaration also greatly weakens the rule of law. Neither the European Commission nor the European Parliament, let alone the governments of individual Member States, should avoid this law, as it is supposed to be a central concern in the European Council. He also believes that the European Council has exceeded its powers, thereby limiting the European Commission’s ability to interpret the law and act in accordance with agreed EU law.
Soros says this is a dangerous precedent because it undermines the Commission’s legal independence and may be, at least in spirit, contrary to the Treaty on European Union. The agreement they adopted is ugly to him and clearly underestimates the wishes of the European Parliament, but because funding is a necessity for a pandemic recovery, the European Parliament is likely to approve the agreement. All he can do is express the moral outrage that people who believed in the EU as a protector of European and universal values must feel. In addition, he feels obliged to point out that a compromise could severely undermine the hard-won confidence gained by the Union institutions through the establishment of the Economic Recovery Fund.
»The Union cannot undermine its own principles, it cannot change them according to the political wishes of some Member States«
»The community is made up of different models of democracies, because European nations differ from each other. Diversity, however, is Europe’s wealth, not a curse. We expect equal treatment and respect for contracts. The Union cannot undermine its own principles, it cannot change them according to the political wishes of some Member States,« the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, said in a recent press release. He cited Poland’s position on making the adoption of the budget and the EU reconstruction package conditional on the rule of law, and touched on the response to the pandemic crisis and European solidarity.
»At this crucial moment, which demands mutual solidarity, a spirit of division has arisen in Europe, as if the enormous efforts made in the Recovery Fund have been nullified by a thing that has always been a weak point of our continent: the tendency to conflict and the search for divisions instead of connections. The way in which the regulation is supposed to make the budget conditional on the rule of law raises serious concerns about the legal basis of this mechanism and calls into question the principles of trust and loyal cooperation between Member States and EU institutions,« Morawiecki said. He added that the legislation on the protection of the budgetary interests of the European Union is subordinate to the Treaty on European Union. »It cannot therefore circumvent, replace or alter the principles set out in the Treaty. The mechanism of the rule of law in the Regulation is circumvention, a kind of ‘overwriting’ of law over the Treaty, more precisely over Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union.«
»Veto is a method of maintaining compromise and is an obstacle to the imposition of will of the currently stronger«
»It is therefore not difficult to imagine a situation where some political force in the European Union does not like the constitutional or economic reform introduced in a particular Member State. It is enough to call it in the media and in the European Parliament a violation of the rule of law, and the threat of the abolition of European funds has a free path. Do we really want that? Permissions of such arbitrariness? The creation of such internal forces that this arrangement would cause?« Morawiecki is concerned. He goes on to explain that such a solution offers unimaginable possibilities for exerting political pressure on the course of affairs in the internal policies of the Member States. »I emphasize: in domestic politics. Today, this any, politically motivated mechanism is aimed at Poland, but do we have any guarantee that tomorrow it will not be aimed at another country that does not want to submit to the political will of the Brussels institutions?«
Disagreeing with this state of affairs, ie the veto, does not lead to the weakening of the European Union. It is a mechanism built into the reality of the structures of the European Union, in accordance with the spirit of the Community and its democratic nature. It is a safety valve that is necessary for the existence of the Union. »It is a method of maintaining compromise and is an obstacle to the imposition of will of the currently stronger. It is a confirmation that the voice of each Member State is equally important. Charles de Gaulle once said that ‘man sacrifices the future for the present only for fear of saying no’. Poland feels co-responsible for the future of Europe. That is why our ‘no’ to the proposed mechanism is at the same time ‘yes’ to a Europe truly united in diversity, free, equal and in solidarity.«