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10/16/2018 What can the EU do to punish Poland? - Policing the club

https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/07/27/what-can-the-eu-do-to-punish-poland 1/5

Policing the club

What can the EU do to punish Poland?

Its options are limited

Jul 27th 2017

Print edition | Europe

IN THE mid-1990s, as the European Union began expanding eastwards, its

politicians faced a tricky question. To join the bloc, countries had to commit to

democratic standards, human rights and the rule of law. The EU had a lot of

leverage over aspiring members. But what if a country turned its back on those

values once it got in?

Article 7 was the EU’s answer. A version of it �rst appeared in the Treaty of

Amsterdam in 1999. Governments that violated the union’s fundamental values

would be threatened with sanctions, including the suspension of voting rights.

Austria had been one of the most vocal advocates for introducing Article 7. But in

2000, when Jörg Haider’s far-right Freedom Party was included in a coalition

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10/16/2018 What can the EU do to punish Poland? - Policing the club

https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/07/27/what-can-the-eu-do-to-punish-poland 2/5

government, it found itself threatened with the measure it had helped draft. The EU

did not suspend Austria’s voting rights, but it did impose some (mostly symbolic)

sanctions. They didn’t work, and Mr Haider remained popular.

After the Haider a�air, the EU tweaked Article 7, adding a warning stage before

sanctions could be imposed. The formal warning requires a four-�fths majority of

the European Council; it sends a strong signal that there is a “clear risk of a serious

breach” of EU values. Imposing sanctions then requires the unanimous backing of

all member states.

Ever since Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party won a narrow

parliamentary majority in 2015 and set about dismantling checks on its power, talk

of Article 7 has grown. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, who has had his

own brushes with Article 7, has called the EU’s criticism of Poland an “inquisition”;

he will doubtless veto any attempt to invoke sanctions. Still, according to Daniel

Kelemen, an expert on EU law at Rutgers University, merely invoking the formal

warning, an unprecedented step, would pile the political pressure on PiS.

On July 26th the European Commission announced that it will trigger the �rst part

of Article 7 if the Polish government resumes e�orts to dismiss judges from its

Supreme Court, which it dropped this week. On the same day, the commission

launched an infringement procedure against Poland for a third law, signed by

Andrzej Duda, the president, which gives the government more control over

ordinary courts. Besides invoking Article 7, in future the EU could attach conditions

to the aid it gives Poland. But it would help if the union’s national governments

spoke out, too. So far Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, and Emmanuel

Macron, France’s president, have barely said a word.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "Policing the club"