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In Hungary, the list of concerns includes academic freedom, migration and asylum laws, as well as discrimination against the LGBT community. The EU also has concerns about corruption and media freedom.
“The sound financial management of the Union budget and the financial interests of the Union may be seriously compromised by breaches of the principles of the rule of law committed in a member state,” the CJEU said in the ruling.
Poland and Hungary argued that the rule of law mechanism had no legal basis in the TEU and the bloc’s other rudimentary document, the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU.
The two countries also said that the mechanism constituted overstepping of EU powers and breached of the principle of legal certainty.
The CJEU dismissed those claims in their entirety, eliciting fury in Warsaw and Budapest.
“This is a historic moment that shows changes in the European Union. From the area of freedom, the EU is changing into an area where it will be possible
to use unlawful violence in order to take this freedom away from member states and limit their sovereignty,” said Poland’s Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro.
“The decision is living proof that Brussels is abusing its power. This is another pressure against our country only because we adopted our law on child protection last summer,” Hungary’s Justice Minister Judith Varga said, referring to a law that many see as conflating sexual diversity with paedophilia.
The option to challenge the rule of law mechanism in the CJEU was written
into the compromise deal reached during an EU summit in December
that overcame Polish and Hungarian opposition to adopting the bloc’s
€1.1tn long-term budget for 2021-2027 as well as the coronavirus recovery fund, worth €750bn.
Funeral home of Vilnius Archdiocese suspected of switching coffins before cremations
Linas Jegelevicius in Vilnius
A funeral home under the management of the Curia of the Archdiocese of Vilnius has reportedly been caught red-handed selling recycled coffins.
The undertaker has reportedly been swapping the coffins before cremation for years, moving the deceased from the €1,000-worth ones into cheap cardboard ones costing a mere €16.
The switch and the cremation would take place in Poland, and the expensive coffins would then be swiftly transported to Lithuania and resold for the initial price, LRT.lt, the website of the Lithuanian national broadcaster LRT, reported.
Some of the employers of the funeral company admitted they were compelled to do the disgusting job of cleaning up the used coffins. Furthermore, they said they were forced by the company heads to keep their eyes closed to what was happening.
It is estimated “Laidojim paslaugu centras”, the funeral home, has raked in at least €45,000 from the macabre practice. The Vilnius Archdiocese is the sole shareholder of the company.
The Vilnius police have launched an investigation.
The reported scam netted the funeral home more than €45,000.
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