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| - Hungary and Poland were expected to block the European Union's budget and coronavirus rescue plan Monday as diplomats met to approve the 1.8-trillion-euro ($2.1 trillion) package. A senior EU envoy warned "we are back in a crisis" over Budapest and Warsaw's refusal to allow funding to be tied to mechanism to enforce the rule of law. EU leaders thought they had resolved dispute over the seven-year EU budget and associated stimulus plan at a marathon four day and night summit in July. They have since also resolved differences with the European Parliament over spending priorities, and the budget framework is ready for approval. But Poland and Hungary remain implacably opposed to tying their future funding to Brussels' judgement on whether their spending is in line with EU law. Poland's prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki threatened a veto last week, and on Monday his hardline justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro returned to the fray. "The question is whether Poland... will be subject to political and institutionalised enslavement," he said. "Because this is not rule of law, which is just a pretext, but it is really an institutional, political enslavement, a radical limitation of sovereignty." Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Hungary was also clear. Spokesman Zoltan Kovacs accused other EU powers of changing the rules since the July summit and implied Hungary would block both the budget and recovery plan. "There's only one package. Everything was agreed in one, so nothing is agreed until everything is agreed," he told AFP. Senior European diplomats, however, said there was no question of the other countries agreeing to loosen the rule of law condition from the plan. "We'll see if Budapest and Warsaw are looking for guarantees and if these are acceptable," one said, warning otherwise of a "serious political crisis." Another suggested that Orban was perhaps looking for more money and that Poland had a "different tone." If the pair continue to hold out, they can't be expelled from the union, but the other nations will have to find another way to build a budget, the second diplomat warned. The accord that emerged from a July summit foresaw a 2021-2027 Multi-annual Financial Framework of 1.074 billion euros and a 750-billion recovery plan. The European Parliament rebelled against cuts to some of its favoured programmes, but accepted a new deal last week that adds back 16 billion euros. Monday's ambassadors' meeting was called to sign off on this, and also on plans to allow the EU to issue joint debt and raise its own funds. EU leaders are due to hold a videoconference on Thursday, theoretically on the coronavirus crisis, but may now be forced to address the budget stand-off. csg-bo-pmu-alm/dc/tgb
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