The European Commission’s Annual Report on the Rule of Law

A few weeks ago the (acting) European Commission presented the annual report on the rule of law in the Union for the year 2023. This annual report, one of the most eagerly awaited documents by the left-wing establishment in Brussels, has been used by the centralising power in the Belgian capital to hand out reprimands and punishments, rewards and congratulations, to member states, depending on the political colour of the government.

As a major part of a broader strategy ‘in defence of the rule of law’ the annual report has served, and serves, to attack nations that do not align with the political majorities of the Commission and Council, notably Hungary and Poland in recent years.
Curiously, Poland, which was the target of all recent annual reports, has all but disappeared. Von der Leyen and her Commission are very happy with Tusk’s coalition government, which took the government away from the most voted party, Law and Justice, and it seems that, magically, Poland, its constitution and its laws, are no longer a problem for the Union.
Hungary, on the other hand, is. Hungary remains the ugly duckling. Hungary is Jünger’s ambush in the great false consensus built by the Brussels elites, the elites of the new European Socialist People’s Party.

As for Spain, despite serious allegations of systematic violation of judicial independence and infringement of the Constitution, despite well-founded complaints from judges’ organisations and senior civil servants, the Von der Leyen Commission congratulates Sánchez. Two years ago it was denounced in the annual report that the General Council of the Judiciary – an independent constitutional body designed in the Spanish Constitution as the governing body of Judges and Magistrates – could not be renewed with the interference of the government and the parties. However, this year, as Spain’s Popular Party and Socialist Party have reached an agreement to share out 10 judges each on the aforementioned Council of the Judiciary, the Commission congratulates the Socialist government.

This is a major scandal. As the Socialist Party and the Popular Party, Sánchez and Feijóo, are now united against VOX, it is no longer contrary to the rule of law that, in violation of the letter and spirit of the Spanish Constitution, the Judges in Spain have to be governed by people handpicked by the political parties; specifically, by two of them, those who support Von der Leyen, those who support Sánchez, those who support an increasingly poorer and less free Europe.

No less serious is that Von der Leyen and Reynders, the commissioner of justice, have avoided in the Annual Report a severe and complete analysis of the Amnesty Law approved by Sánchez with his separatist partners to leave unpunished the serious crimes committed in 2017 by separatist politicians in Catalonia, which deserved the unanimous rejection of the associations of judges, magistrates, senior officials of the State, for being contrary to the Constitution and the rule of law in Spain.

It is clear that the European Commission needs a tamed Spain, with a socialist government supported by the false opposition of the Popular Party, and that the Spanish leaders of the Popular Party have bowed to this demand: Nuñez Feijoo, González Pons, Dolors Montserrat and Moreno Bonilla prefer the Polish model of Tusk to the Italian model of Meloni and Tajani.

That will be the battle of the new legislature: either the Polish and Spanish model of the Totalitarian Single Party, the European Socialist People’s Party, is consolidated, or we recover the path of political freedom and pluralism. And to do so, what we must do is to reject the European Commission’s Annual Report on the Rule of Law.