On 9 September, a remarkable exchange took place in the Dutch parliament between prime minister Mark Rutte and Green-Left MP Bram van Ojik.
Discussing attempts to make disbursement of the €750bn coronavirus recovery fund conditional on EU member states' performance on democratic governance and the rule of law, Rutte asked "Can you make a budget via an intergovernmental agreement, or can you found an EU without Hungary and Poland?"
To someone outside the EU bubble, this may seem l...
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Tom Theuns is assistant professor of political theory and European politics at Leiden University and associate researcher at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, Sciences Po Paris.