Orban says Hungary would veto any EU sanctions against Poland

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Friday said his country would counter any possible EU sanctions against Poland, Reuters reported. “The European Union should not think about applying any sort of sanctions against Poland, because that would require full unanimity and Hungary will never support any sort of sanctions against Poland,” Orban said in a radio interview.

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Thursday that regarding Poland’s disputed constitutional and media shake-up there is little prospect of invoking article 7 of the EU treaty (suspension of Council voting rights for egregious violations of EU norms), the EU Observer reported.

“Now we are in discussions with Poland and I don't want to speculate about further consequences, which could be entailed by the application of Article 7. We are not there, I don't think we will get to that point,” Juncker said at a press conference after a meeting with the Dutch EU presidency in Amsterdam.

The EU Commission will debate the Polish situation at its regular meeting next Wednesday. The debate itself marks the first step of a special rule-of-law monitoring process created in 2014, the EU Observer said. cep legal expert Urs Pötzsch told Spiegel Online he expected that the EU will grant Poland a generous time frame to get its laws in line with EU principles. "Nobody wants an escalation," he said.