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Hungary, Poland Remain Defiant in Standoff With EU

Jamie Dettmer

   The European Union is no stranger to protracted fights, but a
   confrontation over the bloc's multiyear budget and conditions attached
   to the disbursement of a coronavirus recovery fund look set to play out
   for most of the rest of this year, deepening the rift between the
   western and eastern halves of the continent.
   Hungary and Poland, with the backing of Slovenia, remain adamant in
   their refusal to approve the bloc's $2.1 trillion budget while
   rule-of-law conditions remain in place for countries to receive money
   from a separate $750 million coronavirus recovery fund.

   Brussels and western Europeans seem equally determined to leverage
   coronavirus relief money to force compliance with the standards they
   say are necessary to block democratic backsliding by Hungary and
   Poland.

   After days of intensive negotiations, Budapest and Warsaw are showing
   no signs of backing down or rolling back contentious reforms that
   according to Brussels, threaten to curtail the independence of their
   judiciaries.

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