WARSAW, Poland — Poland and Hungary on Monday vetoed the European Union's next seven-year budget and a massive coronavirus recovery plan due to a new mechanism that links EU funding to the rule of law, plunging the 27-nation bloc into a political crisis.
The 1.8 trillion euro ($2.1 trillion) budget for 2021-2027 was agreed upon in principle last week after months of tough negotiations, and is meant to take effect within weeks.
It has sparked stiff resistance in Warsaw and Budapest, where right-wing governments are adamantly opposed to a tool that could cause them to lose EU money if they continue with policies seen as eroding democratic standards.
But EU ambassadors voted by a qualified majority - around two-thirds - in favor of the rule of law mechanism despite their objections. After that, the envoys "could not reach the necessary unanimity" to move ahead on the budget and recovery plan "due to reservations expressed by two member states," Germany's spokesman in Brussels, Sebastian Fischer, tweeted.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's press chief Bertalan Havasi said Monday that Orban had written a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel saying he would veto the budget and post-pandemic relief package.
"There's no agreement on anything until there's an agreement on everything," Orban wrote.
In Warsaw, Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro declared at a news conference Monday that "There will be no consent to this mechanism" and that such a mechanism would "radically limit Poland's sovereignty."
EU officials insisted on the new mechanism linking rule of law to funding in order to have a tool to use against the governments of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland and Orban of Hungary, both of which stand accused by the EU of eroding judicial independence and media freedoms.
