Last week, the European Parliament and the European Council reached a provisional agreement on a Rule of Law conditionality mechanism that directly links upholding the rule of law to receiving funding out of the EU budget. Moreover, now all the values referenced in the Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union must be respected.

As guardians of liberal values, the ALDE Party has a long history of protecting European citizens against political interference in the judiciary system, discrimination of minority groups and restriction of human rights. In our 2019 manifesto, we committed to fight for the establishment of a new mechanism to monitor violations of fundamental rights, civil liberties and the rule of law in the EU member states:

“To protect Europe and our liberal democracies at this contemporary crossroads, the future of the EU can only be based on strong and connected European Union […] We shall establish a new effective mechanism outside the framework of Article 7 of the TEU to monitor violations of fundamental rights, civil liberties and the rule of law in the member states of the European Union on a regular basis. We call on the European Commission, as the guardian of the EU Treaties and on the basis of objective criteria, to enforce sanctions in cases of violations and create stronger conditionality between the rule of law and receipt of European funding.”

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