Thread by @SMerler

Three very important votes in #coreper today. Despite threats by 🇭🇺and 🇵🇱 to veto the EU budget if this Regulation passed, the Rule of Law (RoL) Regulation passed. 🇭🇺 and 🇵🇱 vetoed the Own Resources Decision (ORD). So what happens now? (thread)

https://twitter.com/SFischer_EU/status/1328339678395850753

1) First, if no agreement is found on ORD, we fall back on the previous MFF, which obviously didn't include RRF. BUT the new RoL mechanism will apply to all EU spending, hence also to the carried over MFF. Cohesion & CAP money for 🇭🇺 🇵🇱 will now be scrutinised on RoL grounds.

2) Meanwhile, rest of EU could simply copy-paste the RRF text into an ad hoc intergovernmental Treaty (like the ESM one) and take it out of the EU budget. It would require some technical tweaks, like setting up an SPV to issue rather than having the EU do it, but it is feasible.

3) At which point, 🇭🇺🇵🇱 would have failed in blocking the RRF for other countries, would not get any RRF money themselves, AND would get hassled anyway on RoL on the only money they would be getting, ie the regular MFF cash. Doesn't look like a great deal to me.

4) So it is really a matter of calling the bluff: 🇭🇺🇵🇱 veto is not credible, if the rest of the EU makes it very clear that the immediate next step is putting the RRF into an intergovernmental treaty. Statements to this effect should start hitting the air asap, in my view.

Also heads up that if you should all follow @FrancescoNicoli @chriswratil and @lucasguttenberg, with whom I had the most interesting discussions over the past weeks on this topic.