How Europe Plans to Compel Its Nations to Obey Democratic Rules
- European Commission offers guidelines for rule-of-law power
- New mechanism could withhold budget outlays from culprits
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Countries such as Poland and Hungary that are at risk of losing out on billions of euros in European Union funds due to democratic backsliding just got their first indication of how the new rules will be applied.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, sent a draft of its guidelines to member states this week that outlines how it plans to apply the so-called rule-of-law mechanism, which gives it the power to protect the bloc’s budget from democratic breaches.