STRASBOURG — The European Parliament has decided to sue the European Commission after the executive's repeated refusal to activate a new conditionality mechanism that can freeze EU funds for member states suspected of breaching EU law.

The lawsuit was submitted on Friday by the Parliament's legal service before the European Court of Justice (ECJ), based in Luxembourg.

"We expect the European Commission to act in a consistent manner and live up to what President von der Leyen stated during our last plenary discussion on this subject. Words have to be turned into deeds," said the EU Parliament's president David Sassoli in a statement.

MEPs have for weeks threatened the Commission with the lawsuit in an attempt to pressure the executive into activating the mechanism against EU countries accused of democratic backsliding, such as Hungary and Poland. The regulation underpinning the scheme has been in place since January but no step has been officially taken to put it into practice.

Although President von der Leyen has publicly said she was willing to trigger the mechanism, in recent days, she has changed course: her team will now wait until a pending legal case before the ECJ is decided in order to have total legal certainty. — Euronews