The EU27 leaders may need to hold another meeting to secure an agreement on the bloc’s long-term budget and Coronavirus recovery fund, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Tuesday.
“It may happen that another summit will be necessary… maybe there will be more long months of negotiations and a possible provisional budget. No scenarios should be ruled out at this stage,” Morawiecki told a news conference in Warsaw, Reuters reported.
The same day, the Polish PM met with Hungary’s PM Viktor Orban, as the two countries are shaping their next moves for their attempt to de-link EU funds access to the respect of rule of law. On Thursday, the Union’s heads of state and government are scheduled to meet in Brussels to discuss a number of issues, including the Coronavirus recovery package deadlock, possible measures against Turkey over its activities in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Last week the two countries reiterated their hardline stance on the matter, saying that they will only accept a solution that is in the benefit of both and that they were expecting new proposals from the German EU Council Presidency. With the bloc already suffering the economic aftermath of the Coronavirus pandemic, the Commission is considering ways to bypass Hungary and Poland in the bloc’s €1.8 trillion Coronavirus recovery package, in a bid to put pressure on the two countries to drop their veto and to allow EU money flowing to member states by mid 2021.
Brussels has frequently fired at Budapest and Warsaw over their practices when it comes to freedom of media, judicial independence and migration, in what they two countries see as an attempt of the European bureaucrats to blackmail them.
