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Southeast Europe
August 17, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 17
themselves or their close relatives — this would again allow Dragnea to evade justice as the case concerned two county council employees who were working on PSD business, thereby benefit- ting the party rather than Dragnea himself.
After the events of August 10, even some within the PSD have said the relentless focus on judicial changes and its undermining of the anti-corrup- tion fight have to end. A senior member of the party, former education minister and leader of the PSD’s Bucharest branch, Ecaterina Andronescu, wrote in an open letter quoted by Hotnews.ro that “What is happening now within the PSD and in the country is not all right, it has gone ... too far.” Andronescu went on to ask Dragnea to resign, though it’s unlikely that he will. Other PSD mem- bers who have stepped forward to criticise the authoritarian party leader tend to be summarily expelled.
No unanimity
The EU didn’t remained silent while Hungary and Poland set about adopting changes that went directly against the core values of the union. At is- sue is the very foundation of the principles of gov- ernment on which the EU is built: liberal and ac- countable institutions that are designed to protect the interest of the population and place checks and balances on those in power. The accession countries signed up to this model of government when they joined in 2004 and rejecting it now is not an option for Brussels.
In December, the European Commission triggered the “nuclear option”, Article 7, against Warsaw in December, which may lead to it stripping Poland of its voting rights in the EU for undermining the rule of law.
Meanwhile, Hungary has received warnings for its controversial NGO law and attacks on civil society. Last month the European Commission launched an infringement procedure against Hungarian legislation dubbed “Stop Soros”. Hungary will also be referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union over the country's asylum policies, a Euro-
pean Commission spokesperson said in July. Despite this, the two countries have continued to defy warnings from Brussels. Warsaw is push- ing ahead with its challenges to the rule of law, adopting legislation that will make it easier to stack the Supreme Court with PiS loyalists and remove the court’s president Malgorzata Gersdorf more quickly. The government in Warsaw, like its counterparts in Bucharest, appears to have decid- ed to ride out domestic protests and international criticism rather than engaging or backing down.
Moreover, the Visegrad 4 states have increasingly been acting as a bloc to increase their leverage
on issues like migrant quotas, where they have strong differences with the “old” EU members to the west. Poland and Hungary have said they will support each other when officials in Brussels try to call either state to account. Budapest has made it clear that it would veto any decisions to penalise Poland by stripping Warsaw of its voting rights, and the Polish government returned the favour the same after the European Parliament adopted a resolution to trigger Article 7 against Hungary in May after the government approved controversial legislation on asylum seekers and NGOs and the Central European University. Since major deci- sions like these require unanimity, this means there are no really effective sanctions against infringers.
Even the proposed cuts to cohesion spending for Poland and other CEE countries in the next EU budget, presented as a shift in priorities towards the crisis-hit southern members of the union but perceived as a punishment for the Visegrad 4’s lack of cooperation on refugee quotas, are likely to be softened before the budget is adopted, as this again requires unanimity.
In Romania, international criticism coming on top of the enormous protests managed to act as a check on the government the first time around in spring 2017. But the government pressed on, and eventually fatigue meant that protester numbers fell — even on August 10 they didn’t reach the hundreds of thousands seen in early 2017.