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Bloomberg
European leaders are declaring the continent’s financial crisis to be over, but now a political one is fermenting. A battle between European Union regulators and the Polish government over its plans to weaken the judiciary’s independence is splitting eastern and western Europe in a way that the euro region erupted along a north-south fault line. As Greece returned to the bond market last week, Poland faced the threat of unprecedented EU penalties from the first-ever probe of a member’s respect for the rule of law.
The government in Warsaw is at the sharp end of a campaign to rein in errant states. Populist leaders in Poland and Hungary have been emboldened by Donald Trump’s US presidency and Britain’s decision to quit the EU. Yet the continent’s center has held together. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is now joined by French President Emmanuel Macron in an active defense of Europe against those centrifugal forces. Opponents in the east face the prospect of being marginalized politically and even economically.
“There’s a realization that you have to be hands-on and proactive in defending Europe and its values and its rules,†said Viviane Reding, a European Parliament member from Luxembourg who was the EU’s justice chief from 2010 to 2014. “It’s very strong. Brexit was a real wake-up call.â€
Poland and Hungary form the rebel core because of their political assault on democratic institutions, what Reding called an “authoritarian drift.” Other former communist nations such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania have strayed from the mainstream by rejecting refugees or by plans to make it harder for officials to be prosecuted.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has vowed to pursue an “illiberal†state modeled on the likes of Russia and Turkey, was scolded in May by the European Parliament and faces the threat of EU lawsuits over legislation restricting foreign-funded non-governmental organizations and colleges such as George Soros’s Central European University.