Europe Faces an East-South Conflict Over Cash

Eastern Europe has been on the receiving end of European Union largesse ever since it joined the bloc. But eastern members likely have a big fight on their hands as the bloc's establishment attempts to link further aid to compliance with its vision of European values.

There are many fault lines in Europe, but when it comes to battles over money, it's east versus south. The Financial Times has reported that in the next seven-year budget, to be presented on May 2, the Commission plans to shift "tens of billions of euros" from countries such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to crisis-hit southern European nations such as Greece and Spain. The cohesion part of the budget, according to the London paper, will now become a "cohesion and values" category, directly linking outlays officially meant for nations with less than 90 of the EU average gross national income per capita to compliance with tenets such as the rule of law, democracy and human rights. Since the EU is openly worried about how these values are treated by the nationalist governments of Hungary and Poland and about the eastern European united front against EU-approved refugee quotas, better-behaved southern nations are the obvious targets for redistribution.