Op-Ed: “Overcoming Hungary’s Abusive Use of the Veto in Accordance with the Treaties: The Member State’s Obligation of Sincere Cooperation”

Since the EU’s adoption of the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation (Regulation 2092/2020), which is presented as a ‘mechanism’ complementing the ‘range of instruments and processes that promote the rule of law and its application’, Hungary has increasingly exercised its veto power, taking advantage of the unanimity requirement for many decisions in the European Council and the Council of the European Union.

In Verfassungsblog, Armin von Bogdandy and Luke Dimitrios Spieker proposed using Article 7 TEU in response to Hungary’s repeated, and sometimes abusive, use of the veto, which the authors argue amounts to a violation of the principle of solidarity. However, as noted by Martijn van den Brink and Mark Dawson in their response,