Populist power in East is a problem EU can’t seem to solve

Bloomberg

As European Union leaders haggle over their critical coronavirus recovery plan, they have an escalating problem in the east they can seemingly do little about.
Poland’s presidential election at the weekend laid bare how divided the country is over its relationship with Brussels, with nationalist incumbent Andrzej Duda winning by 51% to 49% against a pro-EU opponent.
While it wasn’t a referendum on membership of the bloc, it was a test of Polish attitudes toward the EU’s democratic standards and desire for deeper integration.
Now Hungary was expected to approve a resolution that suggests it will back future European budgets only if the bloc ends its investigation into democratic rule of law in the country and withdraws threats to
attach conditions to the disbursements of funds.
“The EU’s rule-of-law
procedures have turned into ideology-based political witch-hunts,” Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party said in the bill.
“Ending these has become a necessary condition for assuming common debt and deciding together on a future for European nations.”
Poland and Hungary have long been at odds with the European mainstream, clashing over everything from the independence of courts and control of the media to climate change and immigration. But the latest developments come at an awkward time for the continent as it tries to corral the political support to address the economic fallout from the pandemic. Leaders are due to meet in Brussels.
The question is what the EU can do to respond. So far, the authorities haven’t managed to bring Poland or Hungary back into the fold. While it opened up legal proceedings over their power grab of democratic insitutions, any conclusion — let alone potential sanctions — are a long way off.
There are murmurings from fiscally conservative countries that there should be strings attached to how the EU’s central seven-year budget is distributed, as a way of encouraging countries to stick to the rule
of law.
Officials say, though, they don’t expect any wholesale changes when the 27 leaders meet for their summit to thrash out the framework until 2027. In any case, a decision has to be agreed unanimously by all the government heads — that includes the Polish prime minister, and his Hungarian ally.
“The EU can engage in further infringement actions and cut the money,” said Laurent Pech, professor of European law at Middlesex University
in London. That would need political backing for sanctions,
he said.
Poland, in particular, is the paradigm of the European project, a country that defined the continent’s tumultuous 20th century history and then its efforts to heal the wounds in the 21st. Poles receive more money from the EU on a net basis than any of the 27 members, with hundreds of billions of euros transforming the economy over the past 16 years.