What were the top stories in Europe this week?
State of the Union is our weekly show from Brussels bringing you the best stories of the week.
There were quite a few memorable moments when the European Parliament met in Strasbourg this week.
First, legislators celebrated the 70th anniversary of the institution – “the only directly elected multilingual, multiparty and transnational parliament in the world”, as its president Roberta Metsola put it.
She also described the EU legislative body as a “beacon in defense of democracy”.
With that in mind, MPs got to work the next day, voting to recognize Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism”a resolution that was approved by an overwhelming majority.
Ukraine has been calling for such a strong statement for some time now, and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has reacted strongly.
“Thank you to all the parliamentarians. And then Russia proved that it was true by launching 67 missiles at our infrastructure, at our energy sector, at ordinary people,” the Ukrainian leader said on Wednesday.
Cyber attack on the European Parliament
Russia had just been designated a terrorist state when, a few hours later, external access to the the website of the European Parliament has gone down.
Apparently, a distributed denial of service attack, used by hackers to flood networks with large volumes of data they can’t handle, resulted in a system crash.
Metsola said it was a sophisticated cyber attack for which a pro-Kremlin group claimed responsibility.
The Russian government then proposed to “designate the European Parliament as the sponsor of idiocy”.
Apparently, Russia’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism has not gone unnoticed.
Former Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius, who drafted the resolution condemning Moscow, told Euronews he expects Ukraine to win the conflict, despite Russia’s efforts.
“I think Russia will lose the war and they will be defeated and that will open the doors for transformation in Russia,” he told Euronews.
“Transformation to a more normal type of country, a more European type of country totally abandoning autocracy, totally abandoning post-imperial dreams of restoring an empire and this will create possibilities for the Russian people to have a normal life in Russia same.”
EU money is slowly moving away from Orban
Away from the Ukraine conflict, it was revealed on Thursday that the European Commission is likely to recommend billions of euros in EU funds be withheld from Hungary after ruling that Budapest had failed to implement the reforms needed to ensure that these funds are protected from corruption.
The European Commission’s position was announced hours before MEPs overwhelmingly called for the freezing of EU funds for Hungary due to breaches of the rule of law.
In September, the EU executive called for around €7.5 billion in EU funds to be withheld from Hungary over corruption concerns after triggering a new rule of law mechanism.
This sum represents approximately 65% of the funds received by Budapest under EU cohesion programmes.
The Hungarian government, led by far-right populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, could get the money if it adopts 17 corrective measures negotiated with the Commission by November 19.
These aimed to address “systematic irregularities” in the public procurement process, conflicts of interest of government officials and weaknesses in the investigation and prosecution of cases involving EU funds.
Budapest sent the necessary paperwork on Nov. 19, with Justice Minister Judit Varga describing herself last week as “very optimistic” about the funds disbursing.
But the assessment of the European Commission is that Budapest has not kept its promises and has decided to seize the Council of the EU.
EU countries should therefore vote on this in mid-December with the qualified majority necessary to block the payment.