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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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China and France that year, it becomes clear
that Berlin has no interest in destabilising its V4
neighbours, which also serve as sources of rela-
tively cheap and qualified labour and whose
market Germany considers of vital importance.
There is nevertheless an alternative means of
applying pressure on these countries that could
be much more effective than the provisions pro-
vided in Article 7, which is linking compliance to
access to community funds. Discussion began in
February on the EU multi-annual financial
framework for 2020-2027, which will require
annual cutbacks of somewhere between 12 and
13 billion euros to compensate for the shortfall
caused by the UK’s withdrawal from the Union.
For the very first time, there is talk of plans for
making Member States’ receipt of EU funds
contingent upon a range of factors. Although
the first consideration will undoubtedly be the
fulfilment of economic rules, compliance on po-
litical issues such as refugee quotas or even the
rescission of laws and measures at odds with EU
values or the rule of law could serve as a crite-
rion as well. Despite the difficulty in implement-
ing this concept, Merkel and Macron have both
publically spoken of the possibility. Such criteria
would be certain to have a substantial impact
and provide effective leverage for dealing with
countries that, as mentioned earlier, tend to re-
gard the EU as a cash cow rather than a serious
political project.
In any case, the above examples make it clear
that the EU concerns itself far less with the po-
litical evolution of its Member States than it does
with their economic evolution. It requires candi-
date countries to fulfil a series of conditions prior
to entry – the Copenhagen criteria – that it sub-
sequently supposes continue to be met without
performing the slightest due diligence. Some sort
of monitoring mechanism needs to be estab-
lished to ensure these conditions are respected
on an ongoing basis in order to avoid the type
of undemocratic drift that is occurring now in a
number of countries and prevent such lapses
from converting into the sad state of affairs that
we now have in Warsaw and Budapest.
Secessionist trends in Member States
Another disintegrative force clearly at odds with
the values of unity and integration that charac-
terise the European project is the separatism
threatening the territorial integrity of a number
of Member States. While the situation in
Catalonia may have reached crisis proportions
during the period covered by this report, there
are other places in Europe where secessionist
sentiment runs strong as well.
In September 2017, the autonomous gov-
ernment of Catalonia advocated the approval of
laws contrary to the Spanish constitution by
which it intended to achieve independence with
neither the consent of Madrid nor the support of
a majority of Catalan voters. This was followed
by an illegal referendum bereft of democratic
guarantees on 1 October, in which it is impossi-
ble to know for certain, but organisers claim
42 % of the electorate participated, that gave
rise to fierce confrontations between pro-inde-
pendence elements and law enforcement
agents. On 27 October, the Catalan parliament
approved a unilateral declaration of independ-
ence (UDI) by a slim majority of the chamber that
represented less than 50 % of the voters. The
Spanish government responded to this situation
immediately, suspending Catalan autonomy, dis-
missing the standing Catalan government and
taking legal action against those responsible, the
majority of whom are now either in preventative
detention in Spain or enmeshed in extradition
processes in other European countries.