Research Seminar by Professor Laurent PECH

Department : Law & Tax

Speaker : Laurent PECH (University College Dublin)

Room : T 006 and by Zoom link:  https://hec-fr.zoom.us/j/97890262962 

“(Un)Freezing EU funds to protect the rule of law”

Abstract

The seminar will focus on the EU’s three main instruments when it comes to conditioning initial/continuing access to EU funding on rule-of-law-related grounds: The Budget Conditionality Regulation; the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) Regulation; and the Common Provisions Regulations. The use, misuse and non-use of these instruments will be discussed in light of the EU’s decisions to ‘freeze’ a total of €32bn and €136bn in respect of Hungary and Poland respectively in 2022.  The reasons advanced by the European Commission to subsequently unlock access to these amounts – in part for Hungary, and in full for Poland – will be reviewed in light of two pending CJEU cases relating to the Commission’s decision ‘unlocking’ Hungary’s access to €10.2bn in EU cohesion funding, and Poland’s rule of law milestones which conditioned access to €59.8bn in RRF funding.