The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) vote on a legislative initiative that envisages a permanent EU mechanism to monitor and prevent backsliding on EU values in all member states through country-specific recommendations, with timelines and targets for implementation in the European Parliament in Brussels.

Establishment of an EU Mechanism on Democracy, the Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights: statement by Michal ŠIMEČKA (Renew, SK) rapporteur

SOUNDBITE (English), Michal &#352;IME&#268;KA (RE, SK), rapporteur, The European Parliament and in this report proposes to to establish an annual monitoring cycle on the rule of law that would be enshrined in an interinstitutional agreement between the Commission, the Council and the Parliament, which would then consist of annual monitoring of the state of rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights in all 27 member states, according to a single and objective set of criteria. And the crucial thing here is that we would have the three institutions coming together to to agree on this monitoring mechanism. And one of the reasons why that is important is that at the moment we have a lot of different rule of law tools from Article 7 to rule of law framework to the rule of law, dialog to the CDM and others.

SOUNDBITE (English), Michal &#352;IME&#268;KA (RE, SK), The problem is that each institution is kind of doing its own thing on the rule of law. And what we're trying to do here as Parliament is to try to bring them together and to streamline the various tools that we have and also for the institutions to cooperate. This is the gist of the of the proposal, because we think that the that the rise of authoritarian tendencies in the European Union is a major existential threat for the future, and we need to address it in a systemic and coherent way.

SOUNDBITE (English), Michal &#352;IME&#268;KA (RE, SK), I mean, this has been one of the one of the major one of the major weakness of the existing tools that the European Union has, that now either the Article 7, which has been the proceedings, have been launched against two member states. But there is no progress on the ground. It's not delivering. And that's to some extent, even the infringement proceedings are not as effective as we would have wished. The point here about the annual monitoring, which would be part of an interinstitutional agreement, is that the assessments when the annual report, if they find persistent and systemic breach of, say, the rule of law, it would trigger and that will be written into the interinstitutional agreement. It would trigger a respons,. For instance, the the yes to be a agreed conditionality or possible cuts in in funding from Next Generation EU or European budget or, of course, infringement or Article 7.

SOUNDBITE (English), Michal &#352;IME&#268;KA (RE, SK), <p><b></b>The crucial thing here would be that as part of the interinstitutional agreement, as part of this mechanism, it would be specified exe-ante that if there is if there is a breach, this is this would be the consequence. The problem that we have now, for instance, in the in the exercise that the Commission has launched and that it's gonna be presenting later this month, that we that they've come up with with an annual monitoring, which is fine. But then the problem is that it won't have teeth, because if it's not specified before, what will be the consequences, if there are violations found? Then it's just a piece of paper that the that the member states can disregard. What we're trying to do exactly to remedy that and to have it on paper in an legally binding document that if there are problems found these and these would be the consequences. And they would be they would be triggered almost automatically.</p>

Views in the meeting room during the debate (5 shots) 

Establishment of an EU Mechanism on Democracy, the Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights: statement by Michal ŠIMEČKA (Renew, SK) rapporteur

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Rule of law (2020)

LIBE - Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs