NATIONALISM DOESN'T WORK:

The European Union may move in a matter of weeks to punish countries that don't uphold the bloc's democratic standards by withholding emergency pandemic aid as well as payments from the EU's trillion-euro budget.

Poland, which has clashed with the EU on multiple rule-of-law fronts, stands to miss out on more than 130 billion euros ($149 billion) from the bloc's seven-year budget. Hungary could lose more than 40 billion euros.

The EU has accused the governments in Warsaw and Budapest of illegal judicial revamps, corruption and refusing to adhere to the primacy of EU law, a key premise of the bloc's founding treaty. The flow of billions of euros from Brussels has helped transform the two ex-communist economies, but the EU has become wary of funds being used by the governments to undermine democracy and to attack the bloc.

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