But to update the law (because this sanctioning mechanism is so deep in EU law), you would need agreement from all member states. You can see where this is going... The EU won't try it because Hungary and Poland would obviously vote against it. And the cycle continues.

The current EU plan is to hope that Hungary or Poland's governments get replaced with one that won't support the other, and then consider doing the sanctions.

The other EU plan is to pursue other punishments that don't require a full sanction and basically cause as much hurt as possible even if they can't do the ideal remedy.

They already tried to do a runaround when Poland and Hungary threatened to veto a Covid recovery fund - basically, just set it up anyway for the rest of the 25 as a side deal that wouldn't involve the two and they wouldn't get any funds. In the end Poland and Hungary acquiesced, yet in a petty dictatorial fashion claimed they had won by forcing the EU to include them.

Let‘s not use the word „dictatorial“ in an extremely inflationary way. You can call it a government PR spin if you want, but I think no country in the EU is anywhere close to anything like North Korea or even Belarus.

If anything, it's "dictatorial" in the Sacha Baron Cohen "The Dictator" sense: "Victory! We won! We forced them to include us ...by acquiescing to their demands."

I see, so somethink akin to newspeak: War is peace, losing is winning!

Thanks to those who downvoted showing the continued idiocy or lack of many people on HN who can't see the value that a simple comment can have even on triggering replies; and reaffirming why downvotes are stupid and lazy.