WORKING DOCUMENT on ECA SR 03/2024 – The rule of law in the EU

European Parliament 2019-2024 Committee on Budgetary Control 26.3.2024 WORKING DOCUMENT on ECA SR 03/2024 – The rule of law in the EU Committee on Budgetary Control Rapporteur: Hannes Heide DT\1298627EN.docx PE759.882v01-00 EN United in diversity EN SUMMARY The Regulation on a general regime of conditionality for the protection of the EU budget against breaches of the principles of the rule of law (the “Conditionality Regulation”), which came into force on 1 January 2021, has been applied only once: in December 2022, in relation to Hungary. The Court assessed whether the Commission’s application of the Conditionality Regulation was appropriate and consistent with other mechanisms available under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and the 2021-2027 Common Provisions Regulation (CPR) for cohesion policy. The Court examined the Commission’s internal arrangements for implementing the Regulation, and the actions it took to protect the EU’s financial interests under the three instruments. The Court focused its audit work on the Commission’s actions for a sample of six member states. The sample included those countries for which procedures under Article 7 TEU (Poland and Hungary) and the Conditionality Regulation (Hungary) had been opened and those that fell under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (Romania and Bulgaria). It also included Greece and Italy (based on identified rule of law challenges, geographical balance and materiality). This audit...