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Germany's Katarina Barley, who serves as the European Parliament's vice president, summed up the intention behind the new rules succinctly when she said in October that misbehaving EU members should be "starved financially" into submission... Poland's justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro... "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." Hungary's Viktor Orban, for his part, said "nothing is agreed on until everything is agreed on" -- a reference to the fact that the workings of the European Union mean Hungary was powerless to stop the new rules being added to the budget, so was left with no choice but to block the whole budget, as is its right.
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