Germany and Bulgaria were the most vocal among the EU countries who blocked sanctions against Turkey at the EU summit on Thursday (10 December), reports EURACTIV.

“German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov were the EU leaders who openly opposed sanctions against Ankara,” the sources said.

According to the summit conclusions on Turkey, the EU leaders condemned its aggressiveness and unilateral actions in the Eastern Mediterranean. However, in practice, they took a soft stance, granting Ankara another three-month grace period.

The EU leaders decided to add new names of individuals and companies to the blacklist that currently exists for Turkey’s “unauthorised” gas drillings off-Cyprus.

Other countries such as Spain, Italy, Malta and Hungary were also against sanctions, but did not express it openly.

Austria was supportive of sanctions while France, which was asking for a tough EU response, reportedly toned down its rhetoric at the summit.

Sanctions against Turkey that have been imposed so far have had little added value, considering that Turkey has not stopped the drillings off-Cyprus.

In addition, they called on the European Commission to come up with a report “at the latest in March 2021” regarding EU-Turkey relations overall, ranging from politics to trade, and explore “options and instruments on how to proceed”.

Germany, which currently holds the EU presidency, has always opposed sanctions and wanted to keep communication channels open with Ankara.

 Bulgaria’s PM Borissov is a known friend of Erdoğan and his behaviour is unpredictable,” an EU diplomat reportedly told EURACTIV last week.

PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis presented his evaluation of the results of the EU Summit in Brussels in a press conference on Friday.

The Prime Minister expressed his satisfaction for the “unblocking” of the agreement for the Recovery Fund, saying that he “immediately unlocks” an amount of 32 billion euros for Greece.

Mitsotakis summed up his views by saying that Europe made a step forward regarding the Turkish matter. He said that the ‘philosophy’ between the EU and Turkey remains the same at its core, underlining that Turkey is being called upon to change its aggressive behaviour, adding that Europe supports Greece and Cyprus.

He added that if Turkey continued its provocative actions towards Greece more concrete sanctions would be decided in March.

The Greek PM made it clear that Greece would only sit down for preparatory talks with Turkey if the latter stopped its delinquent behaviour in the region.

Today the European Council endorsed a target for the European Union to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 55% by 2030 below 1990 levels and committed to updating its climate and energy policy framework to achieve this objective. The target will be reflected in the EU’s new climate commitment under the Paris Agreement.

In the conclusion to the European Council meetings, the body said that the European Union is raising its climate ambition to “spur sustainable economic growth, create jobs, deliver health and environmental benefits for EU citizens, and contribute to the long-term global competitiveness of the EU economy by promoting innovation in green technologies.”

Following is a statement from Helen Mountford, Vice President, Climate and Economics, World Resources Institute:

“The European Union is showing that there’s no time to wait in the fight against climate change. With this new target, the European Union has jumped ahead as a leader in the race to a net-zero future.

“The EU’s target to cut emissions at least 55% by 2030 is significantly stronger than its previous pledge. Indeed, the EU’s new climate plan will have greater impact on global emissions over the next decade than any new 2030 commitment under the Paris Agreement to date. 

“Reaching agreement on this ambitious target was a major achievement. Members of the European Union are clearly embracing a new growth strategy that will create jobs, increase efficiencies and bolster the blocs’ competitiveness in the 21st century economy. The plan acknowledges the reality that countries are at different stages in the journey to a net-zero future and that substantial investments are necessary to help some communities transition away from fossil fuels. 

“The European Union has come to recognize that addressing the climate crisis is not only essential for our collective survival but is also a huge economic opportunity. That’s why it’s putting climate action at the heart of its economic recovery. Research shows that ambitious climate action can offer a $26 trillion boost to the global economy between now and 2030 and deliver more than 65 million new, low-carbon jobs.

“Now the European Union faces the important task of strengthening its policies and investments to get on a clear path to achieve its 55% reduction target and lay the foundation to reach net-zero by 2050. Throughout this process, it will be essential for citizens to have their voices heard and hold their leaders accountable for pursuing a low-carbon transformation that is fair, improves people’s lives, and leaves no one behind.

“There is growing momentum behind stronger near-term targets. The world will be watching to see whether other major emitters like China and the United States will deliver ambitious 2030 emission reduction targets that set the pace to reach a safe and prosperous, net-zero future.”

It was predictable that Chancellor Angela Merkel would want to prevent the EU’s unity from being undermined under her watch during the last weeks of what has been a rough turn at the presidency of the Council of the European Union for Germany. Merkel’s first instinct is usually to keep the flock together.

And she managed the trick this time with a typical EU-style compromise: one that is not really good but not really bad, either. The result is the delayed implementation of the European Union’s Rule of Law Mechanism, which had been the product of years of bitter debate and was meant to finally be an effective weapon against the anti-democratic tendencies of the governments in Poland and Hungary.

In summer, the Netherlands and other member states had agreed to take on joint debt to finance the coronavirus fund under the condition that governments such as those in Hungary and Poland could no longer use the European Union as a self-service store. For many years, the citizens of other EU member states had wondered why their taxes should be used to finance the corrupt clique surrounding Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban.

But even the governments of EU member states that had pushed for the Rule of Law Mechanism have now voted for the compromise because, without the budget, the European Union would have been unable to take the action needed during the coronavirus pandemic. With their veto threats, the autocrats in Hungary and Poland succeeded in putting a brake to the Rule of Law mechanism, which will continue to guarantee their impunity.

It was always clear that the only way to make any impression on Orban and his kindred spirits in Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party was to hit them in their pocketbooks. The European Court of Justice has handed down a series of verdicts against both governments, but they are simply ignored. The sole method of constraining them is to take away their EU subsidies.

Lies, homophobia, anti-Semitism

Why do we have to put up with someone like Orban, with his lying propaganda, insults and anti-Semitic attacks? He and the ever more autocratic Polish government have taken the European Union to its political limits.

Almost every country has problems in the transitional phase to democracy; corruption tends to be widespread, and the fight for an independent judiciary takes time to win. But Poland and Hungary are taking quite another path altogether: Their governments are on the way to becoming autocratic regimes. 

They are getting rid of the free press and an independent justice system while systematically curtailing civil rights. In Poland, the government is targeting women and stirring up hostility toward LGBTQ+ communities. There is resistance — but the dramatic example of Belarus has shown us how difficult it is to hold protests when police have been ordered to disperse them by force. 

The European Union cannot put up with such governments. It cannot continue to look the other way, or it will erode its common basis. Septicemia starts on one side and spreads to the remaining limbs. Liberal democracies are having a hard enough time of it anyway; we can’t let them be undermined from within.

At some stage, in about two years, the Rule of Law Mechanism might make it possible to indeed take money away from Orban and Poland’s PiS government. But the European Union could already have used long-existing mechanisms and threatened to take away their right to vote. However, cowardliness and a kind of wrongly understood EU esprit de corps among government leaders prevented this from happening.

The governments of Hungary and Poland have now gained time to continue with their dismantling of democracy. They will regularly be reprimanded and sued, but that is water off a duck’s back to them. As long as the European Union does not take serious action against them, Orban and Co. will go on unperturbed. And, in the end, the political debacle will be one that can barely be reined in. The compromise on the EU budget might have been necessary, but, unfortunately, it was a political mistake.

This article has been adapted from German.

European leaders have hailed the breakthrough that saw the approval of the EU’s much-delayed €1.8 trillion budget and coronavirus recovery package.

It was held up for weeks because Poland and Hungary opposed a mechanism that would make some funds conditional on a country’s respect for core European values.

Warsaw and Budapest, frequently at odds with Brussels over values like rule of law and judicial independence, called it “political blackmail”.

But they have now agreed on a compromise with other European leaders.

It will see the mechanism suspended while Brussels draws up guidelines for how it should be used and what might trigger it.

Europe‘s top court, the European Court of Justice, is also expected to weigh in on its validity.

EU law expert Alberto Alemanno told Euronews that in compromising with Poland and Hungary, European leaders had “killed a mechanism that is supposed to guarantee the rule of law” by turning it into an “instrument of last resort”.

Alemanno, a professor at Paris’ HEC Business School, said the deal was “the fruit of a political choice made by European leaders” to keep Poland and Hungary “on board” with the budget.

How did Poland and Hungary react?

“We have reached an agreement of a kind that, let me stress it, has accepted all of our preconditions that we have made,” said Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

“We have a budget, together with the reconstruction fund, which means big funds for investment, big funds for supporting the development of Poland’s economy, for new technologies, for many goals that need to be implemented, especially now that we want to quickly come out of the pandemic. That’s important to us.”

Meanwhile, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, was also in a celebratory mood.

“And we could say modestly, of course, that we saved the unity of the union. So don’t forget that this dispute was not only about the rule of law, regulation, financial issues, it was about the future of the European Union and the question: what is the power centre of the European Union, the European institutions like Parliament, Commission or the member states?

“And today we delivered evidence that the European Union is nothing else, just the community and alliance of the nations and the states. And nobody can circumvent the intentions and the will of the elected governments of any nation neither the European Parliament nor the Commission, nobody, because [the] European Union is the unity of the nations.”

‘Europe’s rule of law is in crisis’

A French official, who was not permitted to discuss the sensitive deliberations on the record, said that the steps taken against any country for failing to uphold the rule of law would apply retroactively from January 1, 2021.

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that the leaders “adopted a robust agreement on the mechanism to put in place, in respect of the rule of law. Europe moves forward, united, and displays its values.”

While acknowledging that national governments are in dire need of coronavirus funds, some warned of the dangers of delaying action yet again against Hungary and Poland, whose nationalist governments have been accused of undermining judicial independence and media freedoms.

Daniel Freund, the Green group negotiator on the rule of law in the European Parliament, warned that the compromise being discussed would put the system “on hold for 1-2 years.”

“Europe’s rule of law is in crisis,” he said, adding that EU members should not be pressing the European Commission to avoid enforcing “existing laws while judicial independence is abolished in Poland or billions of EU funds end up with Orban’s family and friends.”

Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office said the delay “will allow for irreparable damage to the human rights of people in Poland and Hungary, and to the integrity of the rule of law across the EU.”

How did other EU leaders react?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was a “great relief” that EU leaders passed the delayed €1.8 trillion budget and coronavirus recovery fund.

Charles Michel, president of the EU Council, made of up of leaders of European countries, broke the news of the budget agreement on Twitter on Thursday.

“Now we can start with the implementation and build back our economies,” he wrote. “Our landmark recovery package will drive forward our green and digital transitions.”

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the agreement “underlined indeed Europe’s ability to come together and act” in the face of the “worst crisis” the bloc has faced.

The package includes the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF), the EU’s seven-year budget, worth just under €1.1 trillion, and the €750 billion COVID-19 recovery fund, known as Next Generation EU.

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