The European Parliament believes that Czech Prime Minister Babis should no longer be allowed to co-negotiate EU subsidies for his own agricultural businesses. The Parliament thinks that the EU should finally activate the new sanction procedures of the ‘conditionality mechanism’.
Babis is the founder and owner of Agrofert, a holding company of more than 200 different agricultural businesses. Although he has delegated daily management to two holdings, he remains the ultimate beneficiary. Agrofert is also among the largest recipients of EU agricultural subsidies.
Dutch MEP Lara Wolters (PvdA) co-authored the resolution. “Babis abuses his position at European negotiation tables to benefit from the distribution of European funds. This harms European taxpayers’ trust in the EU. That is why this resolution states that the European Commission should not hesitate to use its new powers.”
In a resolution (505 votes in favor, 30 against, 155 abstentions), the MEPs regret that the Czech government is trying to legalize Babis’s conflicts of interest. They also disagree with the punishment method the European Commission wants to use: withholding EU subsidies for Czech projects. According to the EU politicians, this harms Czech citizens.
They emphasize that “Czech citizens and taxpayers must not suffer the consequences arising from Prime Minister Babis’s conflict of interest and demand that the companies of the Agrofert group repay all unlawfully received subsidies.”
The MEPs believe that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen must now ‘finally’ activate the conditionality mechanism to protect the EU budget. This mechanism was created several years ago to, as a last resort, temporarily suspend the voting rights of ‘rule-of-law violators’ such as Hungarian nationalist Orbán and Polish conservatives within the EU.
So far, heads of state and government have opposed such a tough approach, including against Hungary, which has prevented European Commissioners from daring to apply it to the Czech Republic yet.