The EU and those laws for war times

Article 122 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union and article 42.7 of the EU Treaty represent the legal framework to deal with the most difficult times for the European Union. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has already announced the appeal to 122 for the new common loan tool of 150 billion euros within the Rearm Europe plan.

It allows an accelerated procedure: only the qualified majority of the Council is needed without a vote for the European Parliament. Article 42.7 is instead a kind of article 5 of NATO but defines the mutual defense between the EU Member States. “Without prejudice to any other procedure provided for by the Treaties, the Council, on the proposal of the Commission, can decide, in a spirit of solidarity between the Member States, the measures adequate to the economic situation, in particular if serious difficulties arise in the supply of certain products, in particular in the energy sector”, is the first paragraph of article 122 Natural calamities or exceptional circumstances that escape its control, the Council, on the proposal of the Commission, can grant certain conditions of financial assistance of the union to the Member State concerned.

The European Commission had already resorted to the first paragraph of 122 for the introduction of emergency measures (including Price Cap and the taxation of extra profits) to respond to the energy emergency after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The second paragraph was instead the basis to introduce the Sire (a common loan to allow states to pay the layoffs during Covid) and the MESF, the European financial stabilization mechanism to respond to the sovereign debt crisis in 2010.

Over the years art. 122 was also served as a response to large floods in Germany in 2010, of the explosion of an electric power plant in Cyprus in 2011 and of terrorist acts in Spain in 2004. Article 42.7 of the EU treaty defines the mutual defense: “If a Member State undergoes an armed aggression in its territory, the other Member States are required to provide him with help and assistance with all the means in their own means, 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Clause 42.7 was activated only once, following the terrorist attacks of 13 November 2015 in Paris. It had been evoked several times when Sweden and Finland, not yet NATO members, felt the threat of invasion of the Russia part.