Midday brief, in brief

Today at Commission, justice scoreboard and Schengen

Věra Jourová presented the EU’s justice scoreboard.

Justice and rule-of-law issues are top of the agenda for the European Commission this week.

Before the usual midday briefing, the European commissioner for justice, consumers and gender equality, Věra Jourová, presented the 2017 EU justice scoreboard, which assesses the efficiency, quality and independence of EU countries’ justice systems. You can read the full scoreboard here.

But the timing was a little off as Jourová was unable to answer questions about one of the biggest thorns in the Commission’s side: Hungary, which introduced a higher education bill aimed at shutting down the Central European University. Commissioners will discuss that bill, and see if it breaks EU law, on Wednesday.

“We have not finished the analysis yet,” Jourova said when asked about Orbán’s bill, adding that she feared “there are efforts to decrease the power and the influence of civil society … and a decrease of political pluralism.”

Jourová also said it was a shame that Poland did not send enough data to the Commission about its judicial system ahead of the scoreboard being compiled — a nod to Warsaw’s fights with the EU about reforms of its judicial systems.

Schengen mess

After Jourová had finished speaking, the main topic was new security measures in the Schengen area which came into force last week.

The measures include tighter border controls for anyone entering the Schengen area but reporters said the rules created chaos in Slovenia, Croatia and Greece over the weekend.

The Commission said it will organize “early this week” a meeting with national experts on how to understand and implement the rules, which were proposed by the Commission after the Paris terror attacks in November 2015.