Brussels has drawn up battle plans to punish countries it says violate the EU’s core values.

The European Commission on Wednesday sought to hit back at national governments it accuses of undermining the rule of law. And it sought to do so with one of the few weapons in its arsenal — cold, hard cash.

The plan was presented along with the Commission’s long-term budget proposal, but it would be a separate measure — one that bears all the signs of having been war-gamed to overcome the obstacles it is likely to face.

Although Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker insisted the plan does not target any particular country, it was clearly designed to send a strong signal to Poland — which has clashed with Brussels over moves that gave the government more control over the judiciary — and Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stands accused of cracking down on independent institutions such as NGOs and the media.

Orbán has championed the idea of an “illiberal democracy,” mounted a PR campaign against the European Commission with the slogan “Stop Brussels” and refused to accept EU-mandated migrant quotas.

“A legal norm must be clear and it cannot be an object of political emotions” — Konrad Szymański, Poland’s Europe minister

The Commission plan also sends a warning shot to other former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe that EU officials worry may be heading in the same direction as Poland and Hungary, such as Romania and Slovakia.

The measure will be cheered by politicians in Western net-contributor countries who complain that net recipients in the east are taking large amounts of EU money while not subscribing to EU values. But it also risks worsening the very problem it seeks to solve — a deepening rift between the two halves of the Continent.

“We are a bit uneasy with some proposals that suggest some political discretion, which is in stark contrast with the rule of law,” Konrad Szymański, Poland’s Europe minister, said in Warsaw in reaction to the budget announcement. “A legal norm must be clear and it cannot be an object of political emotions.”

Central and Eastern European countries rely heavily on EU cohesion funds, which are meant to help bridge the gap between richer and poorer parts of the Continent. Such funding accounted for more than 60 percent of public investment in Poland and more than 55 percent in Hungary in 2015-2017, according to Commission figures.

For months, Commission officials have been struggling to come up with a way to link EU funds to EU values while overcoming the various legal, political and procedural hurdles it would be likely to face.

The first obstacle is that the EU’s seven-year budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), has to be approved by all member countries. So any measure in the budget itself would simply be vetoed by any country that feels threatened by it.

To get around that problem, the plan was presented as a separate measure that could be passed by EU member governments with a so-called qualified majority, representing 55 percent of member countries and 65 percent of the EU population. In other words, Poland and Hungary could vote against it but it would still pass into EU law.

The EU could then apply the measure if it decides there is a deficiency of the rule of law or problem with financial management — and the targeted country would need a qualified majority vote to stop it.

EU officials have also worried that cutting off funding would hurt those it does not wish to harm — farmers or construction workers dependent on EU cash, for example, rather than politicians. The measure tries to take that into account too — by requiring governments of affected countries to keep financing the relevant projects or programs.

But although the measure will not formally be part of the long-term budget, which will run from 2021 to 2027, member countries who feel targeted could still threaten to veto the MFF over the plan. Even countries not in the firing line may be wary of giving Brussels such power to turn off the EU cash flow.

Veterans of past EU budget battles have voiced skepticism about the prospects of the Commission being willing or able to impose financial sanctions on a member country.

The measure, for example, resembles the fines and sanctions that the EU can levy under its economic governance rules — and a country has never been severely penalized under those rules.

In an interview last week, Ingeborg Gräßle, the chair of the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee, said that even the current regulations governing the use of EU money are often not implemented.

“Up to now [the Commission] has not been very firm, even when the legal position of the Commission is very clear,” she said, pointing to member countries that fail to pay back EU funds despite evidence of wrongdoing on projects.

Michał Broniatowski contributed reporting from Warsaw.

This article has been updated.

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