Home Sven SIMON

National governments are responding to the COVID-19 crisis with measures that are curtailing civil liberties, restricting parliamentary control and empowering the executive to act. While many measures seem justified, some are a cause for concern. Certain measures have raised questions of legality and treaty compatibility among the European public. Since nothing less than the rule of law, democracy and European unity are at stake, European institutions should press for a factual and legal examination of the matter, and not risk further divisive polarization. The Article 7 procedures have proven to be an inadequate tool to resolve such disputes. If we want to preserve both rule of law and European unity, we need to pursue a non-politicized, judicial course of action. We have to defend the rule of law using the rule of law. The European institution that has the impartial authority to arbitrate over such matters is the ECJ. I therefore think it would have been more appropriate for the European Parliament to ask the Commission to initiate fast-track infringement procedures before the ECJ instead of perhaps prematurely condemning treaty breaches before initiating legal procedures. For this reason, I abstained from parts of paragraphs 36 and 37 of the resolution.