Abstract
The Recovery and Resilience Facility at mid-term: a successful new support instrument of the European Union?
SAROLTA SOMOSI – BEÁTA FARKAS
At the heart of the European Union’s NextGenerationEU financial support programme, launched in 2020, is the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) for crisis management. A radical innovation in the new funding architecture is that funds are secured through EU borrowing and disbursements are linked to the achievement of specific deliverables. The funding will be targeted at green and digital transition, as well as cohesion policy, and will be linked to Member States’ country-specific recommendations. The mid-term evaluation of the programme aims to explore the effectiveness of the RRF in meeting complex objectives, in particular green and digital transformation. After presenting the RRF, the study focuses on the EU Commission and peer reviews and assessments, and then analyses the performance of the six countries that have absorbed the most resources. The results so far show that there are encouraging trends in stimulating reforms, in particular the green transition. However, it is the experience with performance-based financing, an innovation that goes beyond the RRF, that is most questionable. This is remarkable because the experience of the RRF will influence the financing of cohesion policy in the seven-year budgetary period starting in 2028.
Industrial safety, risks, communication – specific characteristics of the Hungarian EV battery industry
ANDREA ÉLTETŐ
The paper published in Külgazdaság (No. 7–8, 2024) discussed the legal regulation of the Hungarian battery industry and its environmental impacts. This report focuses on the industrial safety risks inside and outside the factories, their governmental communication and the handling of local citizens’ activities. It is proved that South-Korean battery cell and recycling factories in Hungary have committed systematic and recurring irregularities over the past years, leading to worker hazards and accidents. The authorities proved to be powerless to efficiently deal with these practices. Factories seem to prefer profit interests over health and safety concerns. With the massive influx of Chinese factories, industrial safety risks will increase even in case of normal functioning. Instead of being correctly informed about this, the public receives a central propaganda that uses all the tools of greenwashing, while the authorities are trying to restrict concerned civil society groups by various means.
The quality of EU decisions and national sovereignty
JÁNOS HERMAN
EU decision-making is not competitive in a multipolar world. EU decisions are made in a heterogeneous, multi-stakeholder, sector-by-sector framework of rules, following lengthy and detailed negotiations between member states. The representation of the common European
interest, which in principle underpins the existence of the Union and the content of its decisions, is weak and often absent due to the nature of the bargaining process. The decisions therefore provide neither the impetus nor the direction for (further) joint action. The EU performs better in areas of Community competence and less well in foreign policy, which remains entirely within the competence of the member states. The limit to improving the effectiveness of decision-making is that the EU is built on a basis of intergovernmental consultation and negotiation, and can ultimately always be reduced to this. The institutional-structural development of the Union has been frozen at a half-way stage without political integration having been initiated. This is the root of the deficiencies in decision-making, which is why EU decision-making cannot be made truly effective by superficial corrections, i.e. by leaving intergovernmentalism intact. A series of crises and ordeals, the diminishing returns of the current decision-making model, and the forthcoming further enlargement of the EU could increase the ambition for reform. A modest but useful first step could be extending the scope of qualified majority voting.
The World Trade Organisation dispute settlement mechanism and its current crisis
ORSOLYA ANTAL
This paper aims to present the WTO dispute settlement mechanism from a broad perspective. Accordingly, it highlights the milestones that have marked the development of the dispute settlement mechanism. It discusses the competence of the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), the procedure, the rules for the implementation of its decisions, and the elements of amicable dispute settlement, based on predefined rules, stressing that the application of these rules has so far guaranteed that stronger members do not oppress weaker ones. The paper also aims to present the procedure prior to the implementation of the decisions and the main features of the current dispute settlement crisis, including the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA), given that in the current situation, this forum can be used if a Member State is not satisfied with the report of the dispute settlement panel.