The very functioning of the Union and its internal market is endangered if in one of its Member States the fundamental values, in particular the rule of law, are no longer respected.Footnote 1
As usual, when the leaders – when the members of the great political elite – turn against their own people, there is always a need for inquisitors to launch proceedings against those who voice the opinion of the people. In our earlier four-year term, the European Union had a grand inquisitor, and her name was Madame Reding. That grand inquisitor failed, and now they’ve found a new one: the new grand inquisitor’s name is Timmermans … at this point in time, Poland is chosen as the inquisition’s main target in order to weaken, to destroy, to break national governance.Footnote 2
I. INTRODUCTION
In a speech delivered on 26 July 2014, Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister since 2010, explained that ‘the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state’ which would ‘not reject the fundamental principles of liberalism such as freedom.’ Instead, it ‘does not make this ideology the central element of state organisation’, but ‘includes a different, special, national approach’.Footnote 3 He further argued that he did not believe ‘that it is impossible to construct a new state built on illiberal and national foundations within the European Union’.Footnote 4
The implementation of Viktor Orbán’s illiberal state agenda has, however, regularly been decried by the EU and described by critics as having transformed Hungary into a ‘grey zone between democracy and dictatorship’ and a ‘mafia state’.Footnote 5 The recurrent tension between the EU and Orbán recently culminated in the first ever adoption by the European Parliament of a resolution calling for a vote on the activation of the preventive arm of Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) on the grounds that the ‘current situation in Hungary represents a clear risk of a serious breach of the values’ on which the EU is based and which are said to be common to the EU Member States.Footnote 6
Article 7 TEU, which is often referred to (inaccurately in our view) as the EU’s ‘nuclear option’, was first inserted into the EU Treaties via the Amsterdam Treaty in order to empower the EU to monitor and eventually subject any of its Member States to sanctions in a situation of serious and persistent breach of the values laid down in Article 2 TEU, one of which is the rule of law.Footnote 7 Article 7 was further amended by the Nice Treaty to provide for a public warning that EU values are in danger in the situation in which there is a clear risk of a serious breach by a Member State of those values. In this situation, provided that this provision is triggered, ‘the Council shall hear the Member State in question and may address recommendations to it’ according to Article 7(1) TEU. The public warning of Article 7(1) is often referred to as the preventive arm while the declaration that there is a breach, potentially accompanied by any eventually sanctions such as the suspension of EU voting rights, is outlined in Article 7(2) and (3) and is often called the sanctioning arm. In 2014, the European Commission adopted a ‘Rule of Law Framework’ for assessing whether a Member State had endangered the rule of law sufficiently that Article 7 TEU should be invoked.Footnote 8
Two points may be worth emphasising at this early stage. First, the insertion of Article 7 revealed a lack of confidence amongst the Masters of the Treaties in the effectiveness of pre-accession conditionality at a time where the EU was getting ready to welcome ten new countries from Eastern Europe.Footnote 9 Existing Member States evidently hoped that the mere presence of Article 7 would act as a sufficient deterrent and prevent any democratic and rule of law backsliding post accession. Second, the European Commission has taken the position that the scope of Article 7 ‘is not confined to areas covered by Union law’, which means that the Union may act ‘in the event of a breach in an area where the Member States act autonomously’ because any country breaching the EU’s fundamental values in a manner sufficiently serious to be caught by Article 7 is likely to ‘undermine the very foundations of the Union and the trust between its members, whatever the field in which the breach occurs’.Footnote 10
While the situation in Hungary may well see the preventive arm of Article 7 activated for the first time by the end of 2017, this provision has also become increasingly mentioned in the context of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Poland. Indeed, soon after winning the legislative elections in 2015, Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) ‘embarked on a course of change that places it solidly in the illiberal camp, with many of the initiatives mirroring those enacted by Fidesz in Hungary’, especially its attempt to rapidly capture the Polish Constitutional Tribunal in order to be able to violate the Polish Constitution at will.Footnote 11 The actions of PiS led the European Commission to activate its so-called Rule of Law Framework for the first time in January 2016.Footnote 12 The situation in Poland has gone from bad to worse since and the multiple rule of law recommendations made by the Commission have not only been ignored but also openly and rudely dismissed by Polish authorities. Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s de facto leader, went as far as to argue that ‘there is nothing going on in Poland that contravenes the rule of law’.Footnote 13 Faced with an attempt in July 2017 to dismiss all of the Polish Supreme Courts judges, the European Commission finally explicitly threatened to trigger Article 7(1) TEU immediately ‘should the Polish authorities take any measure of this kind’.Footnote 14 In the words of Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission:
The Commission is determined to defend the rule of law in all our Member States as a fundamental principle on which our European Union is built. An independent judiciary is an essential precondition for membership in our Union. The EU can therefore not accept a system which allows dismissing judges at will. Independent courts are the basis of mutual trust between our Member States and our judicial systems. If the Polish government goes ahead with undermining the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law in Poland, we will have no other choice than to trigger Article 7.Footnote 15
This article will focus on the EU’s attempts to address the systemic threats to and breaches of the rule of law that have materialised inside the EU. It will first explain how rule of law backsliding tends to happen in practice before offering a more theoretical definition of this notion (Part II). A summary of the key features of the Commission’s Rule of Law Framework in the light of its first activation against Poland will follow (Part III). The European Commission’s efforts to prevent or roll back what we call ‘rule of law backsliding’ in countries such as Hungary and Poland as well as the actions of the Council and European Parliament will then be critically assessed (Part IV). The paper will conclude with a brief overview of the new mechanism proposed by the European Parliament on 25 October 2016 and some suggestions on the possible way forward to deal with autocratic regimes within the EU (Part V).
To summarise our argument: the Commission invoked a new Rule of Law Framework to cope with a rapidly deteriorating situation in Poland, after the government bluntly attacked the Constitutional Tribunal, but we believe that this effort was bound to fail given that the new framework was based on the questionable presumption that a discursive approach could produce positive results. This presumption reflected the Commission’s failure to learn the right lessons from the Hungarian case, which strongly suggested that a discursive approach would be ineffective in a situation where there was a concerted plan to evade Article 2 values. The presumption of a discursive resolution further reflected the Commission’s failure to appreciate that would-be-authoritarians always seek to consolidate power as soon as possible and regrettably, the Rule of Law Framework simply delays the time when Article 7 TEU might be invoked until after the critical consolidation of power has already occurred. The Commission’s activation of the Rule of Law Framework against Poland has revealed further shortcomings, including the Commission’s failure to treat like situations alike by invoking the Rule of Law Framework only against Poland and not against Hungary, as well as by the Commission’s reluctance to move to the next logical stage – Article 7 TEU – when confronted with belligerent rhetoric and complete non-compliance with its recommendations. In the Commission’s defence, however, it is difficult to be bold and firm when you have to work with intergovernmental institutions such as the European Council, which has been reluctant to engage in any criticism of Member States.
Looking beyond the Hungarian and Polish cases, our key argument is that the only way to prevent the occurrence of a consolidated autocracy in violation of EU values is to act fast as soon as the danger signals are clear. A recommendation for speed, however, goes against the general tendency of EU institutions to assume that stalling for time solves most problems. The Rule of Law Framework appears to be designed for normal times when simply slowing a process down cools heads and makes friendly resolution of disputes more likely. But in the abnormal times of a budding autocracy inside the EU, the Rule of Law Framework simply adds a de facto compulsory step before the activation of one of the two arms of Article 7. While this may enable the Commission to accumulate incriminating evidence and help create a political environment in which the rogue government may progressively lose the support of its peers before the eventual triggering of Article 7, the Framework has also arguably made the situation worse by enabling rogue governments, who did not care about their international reputations, to consolidate power in plain sight while the EU dithered over what to do.
If this problem of rogue Member States within the EU is to be solved, we believe that all EU institutions must use all of the tools at their disposal. The Commission must revive and reframe its use of the infringement procedure. We also call on the Commission to vigorously press the European Council and the Council to unequivocally support its efforts in establishing unambiguous deadlines and instructions when the Rule of Law Framework has been invoked. The European Parliament could have triggered Article 7 if it had worked toward establishing the two-thirds vote it would take to do so. But that could only be done if partisan politics were put aside so that powerful parties such as the European People’s Party did not shield their member governments from the consequences of violating EU basic values. Even the Court of Justice must recognise that the EU faces new challenges that call for adjustment of existing doctrine created in better times. For instance, where any EU Member State ceases to comply with the most basic understanding of the rule of law and the EU institutions have otherwise failed to effectively correct the situation, the principle of mutual trust ought to be adjusted.
Europe has been juggling multiple crises in recent years, so the internal affairs of a rogue government or two may seem less critical to Europe’s well-being than crises that affect multiple states at the same time, like the Euro-crisis, refugee crisis or the fallout from Brexit. But the proliferation inside the EU of governments that no longer share basic European values undermines the reason for existence of the EU in the first place. It also threatens the functioning of a legal framework which ‘is based on the fundamental premiss that each Member State shares with all the other Member States, and recognises that they share with it, a set of common values on which the EU is founded’.Footnote 16 The ‘values crisis’ may not seem as urgent as the other crises on European plates, but it has the most far-reaching implications for the European project because without common values, there are fewer reasons for the EU to exist. Europe therefore fails to act at its peril. And it needs to act before rogue governments bent on establishing authoritarian regimes become ever more entrenched.
II. A NEW AND SPREADING PROBLEM: RULE OF LAW BACKSLIDING WITHIN THE EU
As early as January 2011, when Hungary took up the rotating presidency of the Council, it was clear that all was not well. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had only been in power for seven months, but the then European Commission President José Manuel Barroso broke with the usual protocol during a joint press conference which customarily involves only congratulating the incoming presidency for its preparation. Instead, Barroso strongly criticised the Hungarian government for having passed laws that raised concern about its commitment to basic values.Footnote 17 These concerns were to be often repeated, as Hungary went on to adopt a new constitution containing provisions that challenged EU law, passed laws about the Central Bank that had not been the subject of consultation with the EU, captured the ordinary judiciary through lowering the judicial retirement age and fired the data protection ombudsman.Footnote 18 At first, the Commission handled the consolidation of power in Hungary as a set of individual and separate acquis violations.
By 2013, Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the Commission at the time, observed that the EU was facing unprecedented ‘rule of law crises’ revealing problems of a systemic nature.Footnote 19 Soon after, President Barroso stressed the increasing number of ‘threats to the legal and democratic fabric in some of our European states’.Footnote 20 Since then, the rule of law situation has continued to steadily worsen in Hungary under the stewardship of Viktor Orbán. The rule of law also abruptly deteriorated in Poland following the parliamentary victory of Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice Party in October 2015. While both the Barroso Commission and the subsequent Juncker Commission have made repeated worried comments about Hungary, and the Juncker Commission has publicly criticised Poland, the situation has not improved.
While many organisations, officials and experts have expressed serious and repeated concerns regarding ‘rule of law backsliding’ in these two countries, there is no established definition of this notion, which is now even used in EU official documents.Footnote 21 Before we offer a definition, it may be useful to briefly explain how rule of law backsliding concretely occurs. The cases of Hungary and Poland, to mention only the EU examples of a broader international trend, suggest a new worrying pattern in the fate of constitutional democracies. One may go as far as to speak of a recipe for constitutional capture being followed in one state after another, a process which results in a systemic undermining of the key components of the rule of law such as independent and impartial courts.Footnote 22 This process follows a well-organised script:
-
1. Rule of law backsliding tends to begin with a significant number of citizens losing faith in their system of government for a number of reasons which vary from increasing inequality, persistent unemployment or the predatory practices of the ruling elites. This is often accompanied by a crisis in the party system in which one of the mainstream parties is either riven with conflict or takes a sharp turn to an extreme which then presents itself as a normal option at the next election.
-
2. Disgruntled citizens vote to break the system by electing a leader who promises radical change, often referring to the ‘will of the people’ while attacking the pre-existing constitutional framework with cleverly crafted legalistic blueprints borrowed from other ‘successful’ autocrats, a pattern that led Professor Cooley to speak of a new ‘League of Authoritarian Gentlemen’.Footnote 23
-
3. The new autocrats act quickly to shut down the key offices that might resist their consolidation of power, which includes the independent judiciary, the media and the repressive institutions (security services, police, public prosecutor’s office).
-
4. To remain popular, these autocrats engage in benefit giveaways while they seek to control the public debate and eliminate alternative views through the bullying of civil society groups and the deployment of tax police and public prosecutors, newly captured, against their opponents.
-
5. They then change the election law, the electorate (by pushing the opposition out of the country or suppressing their votes) or both.
-
6. When voters eventually wake up to the damage done (usually too late, as the new autocrat has by that time destroyed any channel through which alternative views may be expressed), they have few options to resist because their constitutional system has been captured and no constitutional avenue remains to effectively challenge the government/ruling party.
-
7. In the unlikely situation in which resistance nonetheless emerges from the Parliament or from the streets, biased referenda can always be organised to confirm the will of the leader under the guise of the will of ‘the people’, a notion which authoritarian populists find useful to rely upon in order to put themselves ‘above democratic institutions and to overcome obstacles’ which may stand in their way.Footnote 24
-
8. Having sealed the space against dissenting voices and rewritten electoral regulations, autocrats can then expect to get the votes they need to win subsequent elections by whipping up imaginary enemies or giving away state largesse to garner votes. In this way, the rotation of power from one party to another becomes a feature of the past.
In light of this pattern of constitutional capture, we propose to define rule of law backsliding as the process through which elected public authorities deliberately implement governmental blueprints which aim to systematically weaken, annihilate or capture internal checks on power with the view of dismantling the liberal democratic state and entrenching the long-term rule of the dominant party. Footnote 25 This process enables the establishment of electoral autocracies and the solidification of one-party states in which elected officials of the ruling party claim exclusive authority to act on behalf of ‘the people’.Footnote 26
Rule of law backsliding is a decisive issue for the whole EU because it not only affects the citizens of the country where this phenomenon is happening, but it also affects other EU citizens residing in any such ‘illiberal regime’ as well as, indirectly, all residents in the EU through these regimes’ participation in the EU’s decision-making processes and in the adoption of norms that bind all in the EU. In addition, given that implementation of EU law occurs primarily within Member States, a rogue government that no longer feels bound by the basic principles of the EU can create black holes within the EU where EU law can no longer be counted upon. Consider, for example, how dependent EU Member States have become on each other’s independent courts. Judicial capture by an illiberal governing party poses a threat to the correct, consistent and effective application of EU law within the affected (not to say infected) Member State. It also poisons the use of EU mechanisms that are in place to guarantee the consistent interpretation and application of EU law at Member State level and to allow enforcement of national court judgments throughout the EU. In a nutshell, EU Member States have become too interdependent to confine the effects of rule of law backsliding only to the backsliding state.
While we refer to ‘rule of law backsliding’ in this paper, a number of connected notions such as ‘stealth authoritarianism’, ‘democratic decay’ or ‘authoritarian reversion’ may be usefully relied upon to make sense of countries like Hungary and Poland.Footnote 27 It is important however not to confuse rule of law backsliding with ‘mere’ structural rule of law deficiencies in countries that have been facing endemic corruption, weak institutional capacities, or insufficient resources at the administrative or judicial levels.Footnote 28 Indeed, one often reads that major rule of law problems can be identified in other EU countries and one should not therefore single out Hungary and/or Poland. The existence of significant rule of law problems in EU Member States with historically weak or corrupt judiciaries or countries facing major budgetary cuts cannot be denied. We believe, however, that Hungary and Poland raise challenges of an utterly different nature because rule of law backsliding is a deliberate strategy pursued by public authorities with the goals of fundamentally undermining pluralism and creating a de facto one-party state where ‘changes in government through fair and honest elections become all but impossible’ following the capture of ‘the executive and legislative branches, but also the media, the judiciary, civil society, the commanding heights of the economy, and the security forces’.Footnote 29 These are states in which the rule of law had in fact been achieved and is now being systematically dismantled, which is a different sort of problem from not being able to achieve the rule of law in the first place. Backsliding implies that a country was once better, and then regressed. We are particularly concerned with cases where this retrogression is a deliberate strategy of a ruling party.
III. THE COMMISSION’S SOLUTION: A NEW RULE OF LAW FRAMEWORK
This section will offer an overview of the key features of the Rule of Law Framework (Part III.A), which the European Commission adopted in March 2014, before reviewing how this new instrument has been applied to Poland (Part III.B) and then offering a critical assessment of the Commission’s variable rationale to justify not acting similarly against Hungary (Part III.C).
A. The Framework’s key features Footnote 30
In his 2013 State of Union address, José Manuel Barroso, then President of the European Commission, called for a new instrument that would fill the space between the Commission’s infringement powers laid down in Articles 258–260 TFEU, and what he referred to as the ‘nuclear option’ of collective sanctions laid down in Article 7 TEU. Underlying this call for a new instrument was Barroso’s belief that neither of these two existing options could effectively avert or remedy rule of law crises of a systemic nature.
Barroso’s ‘nuclear option’ was unhelpful because it further undermined the dissuasive nature of Article 7 and it was misleading because there was nothing ‘nuclear’ about stating the mere existence of a risk of serious breach and eventually adopting recommendations to prevent this risk from materialising. That said, for a warning system, Article 7 is very difficult to use. Article 7(2) TEU requires that any sanction must follow a unanimous vote in the European Council (minus the country subject to the proceedings), something that is nearly impossible to obtain under any circumstances. Moreover, once there are two ‘illiberal’ national governments in the EU determined to assist each other, this makes the deployment of the ‘biting’ clause of Article 7 impossible unless both countries are tackled de concert. Footnote 31 Hungary has already committed itself to blocking any eventual sanctions against Poland and vice versa.Footnote 32 Article 7(1) does, however, contain another clause providing for the adoption of ‘recommendations’ by the Council should the Council agree that a clear risk of a serious breach of EU values is imminent and that clause does not require unanimity. That said, even invoking this first ‘warning’ step is difficult, since it requires a two-thirds majority of the European Parliament and four-fifths of the Member States in the Council to agree.
With respect to the infringement procedure, the Commission’s narrow interpretation of its powers means that it has so far only pursued individual cases where national authorities do not implement or correctly apply specific provisions of EU law. This led Barroso to conclude that infringement actions could not be effectively used against ‘illiberal governments’ when they acted outside the strict scope of EU law or where they violated EU values, which are themselves of a political and diffuse nature not susceptible to enforcement through infringement actions as currently understood.Footnote 33 Under this interpretation, for instance, in the absence of any general EU legislative competence over the organisation of national judiciaries or the standards of higher education systems, governmental attacks on courts or universities – either through legal means or through budgetary and other non-legal strategies – may not be easily subject to infringement proceedings. This explains, for instance, why the Commission sought to protect judicial independence in Hungary via an infringement action based on age discrimination.Footnote 34 Most recently, in the context of Orbán’s attempts to shut down the Central European University, the Commission similarly chose an indirect route to protect academic freedom via an infringement action primarily based on a breach of freedom of establishment and the freedom to provide services.Footnote 35 In both cases, the charged violation missed the reason why the practice was deeply disturbing as a violation of the basic tenets of the rule of law.
The Commission read Articles 7 TEU and 258 TFEU narrowly when it answered the Justice and Home Affairs Council’s express request in 2013 that it should ‘take forward the debate in line with the Treaties on the possible need for and shape of a collaborative and systematic method to tackle’ rule of law backsliding.Footnote 36 Believing that it could not act with the tools available, the Commission concluded that a new instrument was needed. Known as the Rule of Law Framework, this instrument, adopted in March 2014, takes the form of an early warning system whose primary purpose is to enable the Commission to enter into a structured dialogue with the Member State concerned so as to prevent perceived systemic threats to the rule of law from escalating. This procedure consists of three main phases: (1) In the assessment phase, the Commission assesses whether there are clear preliminary indications of a systemic threat in the country under preliminary investigation in which case a ‘rule of law opinion’ will be sent to the government concerned; (2) in a situation where no appropriate actions are taken following the notification of the opinion, a ‘rule of law recommendation’ may be adopted and may include specific suggestions on ways and measures to resolve the situation within a prescribed deadline; and (3) finally, in the follow-up phase, the Commission monitors how its recommendation is implemented. Lacking satisfactory implementation, the Commission may then decide at its discretion whether a recourse to Article 7 TEU is warranted, hence the informal name given to the Framework: the ‘pre-Article 7 procedure’.
Though the Framework was clearly designed for the case of Hungary, the first time it was activated was when Poland followed Hungary’s lead soon after the Law and Justice Party won an absolute majority in the Polish Parliament in October 2015 with only 38% of the vote.
B. The Framework’s first activation against Poland Footnote 37
1. The Commission’s initial Rule of Law Recommendation
On 13 January 2016, the European Commission announced that it would carry out a preliminary assessment of the situation in Poland under the Rule of Law Framework. According to Frans Timmermans, First Vice-President of the European Commission who holds the inaugural rule of law portfolio, the primary justification for this unprecedented step was the fact that the rulings of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal were ‘not respected’, which ‘is a serious matter in any rule of law-dominated state’.Footnote 38 The legislative changes adopted by the Sejm with respect to Public Service Broadcasters was the other justification put forward on the grounds that democracy requires the protection of ‘freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and respect of the rules governing the political and electoral processes’.Footnote 39
In the absence of any concrete action by the Polish authorities to resolve the Commission’s rule of law concerns, the Commission formalised them in an Opinion adopted on 1 June 2016, which was not initially made public.Footnote 40 Polish authorities were then invited to submit their observations in response to the Opinion. In the continuing absence of any satisfactory resolution of its concerns, the Commission finally adopted a Recommendation on 27 July 2016.Footnote 41 In the words of First Vice-President Frans Timmermans:
Despite the dialogue pursued with the Polish authorities since the beginning of the year, the Commission considers the main issues which threaten the rule of law in Poland have not been resolved. We are therefore now making concrete recommendations to the Polish authorities on how to address the concerns so that the Constitutional Tribunal of Poland can carry out its mandate to deliver effective constitutional review.Footnote 42
The Recommendation gave the Polish authorities three months to implement a total of five ‘concrete recommendations’. The most significant of these required the Polish authorities to fully implement the judgments of the Constitutional Tribunal, which they had refused to publish and follow, so as to be able to ‘capture’ the Constitutional Tribunal by (unconstitutionally) appointing judges approved by the ruling party.
Rather than seeking to implement any of the European Commission’s recommendations or even engage in a façade of dialogue with it, the Polish government instead focused its energy on denying the legality of Commission’s Rule of Law Framework. The leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) threatened the Commission with an annulment action against the Rule of Law Framework while Poland was in the middle of being reviewed under that Framework.Footnote 43 This threat was oblivious to the fact that neither the Rule of Law Opinion of 1 June 2016 nor the Rule of Law Recommendation of 27 July 2016 were, strictly speaking, legally binding acts. As such, they could not be subject to annulment actions. Indeed, the Commission’s pre-Article 7 procedure was specifically adopted with the view of promoting the resolution of rule of law problems via a discursive, soft law approach.
Even if an action for annulment could have been brought, the argument that the European Commission had overstepped its mandate does not sustain scrutiny. Indeed, Article 7(1) TEU implicitly empowers the Commission to investigate any potential risk of a serious breach of EU values by giving it the competence to submit a reasoned proposal to the Council should the Commission be of the view that Article 7 TEU ought to be triggered on this basis. In other words, Article 7 TEU already allows the monitoring of EU countries prior to the determination of a serious breach of EU values given the obvious need for the Council to be able to rely on solid factual evidence before eventually finding against a rogue Member State.Footnote 44 The Rule of Law Framework merely makes more transparent how the communication between the Commission and the potentially offending government shall proceed.
Be that as it may, the Polish government did not limit itself to challenging the legality and legitimacy of the Commission’s actions. It also actively continued to further undermine the functioning of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal via the adoption of a new Act on 22 July 2016 that strongly limited the independence of the court. This led the Venice Commission, in another Opinion dedicated to the situation in Poland, to regret that
instead of unblocking the precarious situation of the Constitutional Tribunal, the Parliament and Government continue to challenge the Tribunal’s position as the final arbiter of constitutional issues and attribute this authority to themselves. They have created new obstacles to the effective functioning of the Tribunal instead of seeking a solution on the basis of the Constitution and the Tribunal’s judgments, and have acted to further undermine its independence. By prolonging the constitutional crisis, they have obstructed the Constitutional Tribunal, which cannot play its constitutional role as the guardian of democracy, the rule of law and human rights.Footnote 45
Faced with what Professor Sadurski has not unreasonably described as a ‘constitutional coup d’état’ and a government denying the existence of a problem, the Commission was left with no choice but to conclude that Poland had failed to implement any of its recommendations.Footnote 46 But instead of promptly activating Article 7 TEU so as to prevent the capture of the Constitutional Tribunal before the expiry of its President’s term of office on 19 December 2016, the Commission decided instead to adopt an additional Recommendation on 21 December 2016, a step not explicitly foreseen in the 2014 Communication describing the Rule of Law Framework. Faced with a clear situation of defiance, the Commission failed to trigger Article 7 and instead played for more time.
2. The Commission’s complementary Rule of Law Recommendation
This complementary Recommendation was justified on the basis that some ‘important issues remain unresolved’ while ‘new concerns have arisen in the meantime’.Footnote 47 The new concerns continued to be primarily connected to the Polish Constitutional Tribunal and its enduring inability to ensure the effective constitutional review of legislative acts due to the repeated attempts by Polish authorities to undermine its legitimacy and efficiency. By the time the Complementary Recommendation had been issued, a PiS-appointed judge had become the acting president in violation of the usual procedure for election of an acting president and was well on her way to becoming the permanent president in the same day.
Seeing the final capture of the Tribunal coming, the Commission highlighted three new issues in particular that the actions of the Polish government had added to its list of violations of the rule of law: (1) The adoption of three new laws since its first Recommendation, laws designed to further interfere with the operation of the Constitutional Tribunal by providing a roadmap for the PiS party to capture the presidency of the court; (2) the appointment of an interim president in a highly unusual manner, pursuant to one of the new laws; and (3) the abandonment of the normal procedure for filling the vacancy of the presidency of the Court.Footnote 48 But as the Commission was issuing the new Recommendation, the Polish government sped up and magnified the violations by acting in contradiction of a direct request from the Commission to not fill the Tribunal’s presidency. Given this pattern of conduct, it is difficult to understand why the Commission thought that it would be useful to continue to pursue any sort of dialogue with a government that was so plainly and disrespectfully ignoring its warnings.
Be that as it may, the Commission eventually concluded that the three laws mentioned above and signed by the Polish President of the Republic on 19 December 2016, largely duplicated the Law of 22 July 2016 previously severely criticised by both the European Commission and the Venice Commission as well as previously declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Tribunal. The government had refused to publish or follow the decision of the Constitutional Tribunal that declared this prior law unconstitutional. Moreover, the re-enactment of the unconstitutional law represented a frontal challenge to the Court and to the European Commission. This led the Commission to logically conclude that the new laws continued to ‘seriously threaten the legitimacy of the Constitutional Tribunal and consequently the effectiveness of the constitutional review’.Footnote 49 In light of the continuing existence of a situation of a systemic threat to the rule of law in Poland, Polish authorities were asked to address the Commission’s criticisms within two months of receipt of the Commission’s complementary Recommendation. In a thinly veiled warning, the Commission finally pointed out that ‘recommendations adopted under the rule of law Framework do not prevent the mechanisms set out in Article 7 TEU being activated directly, should a sudden deterioration in a Member State require a stronger reaction from the EU’.Footnote 50
Despite an obvious continuing deterioration of the situation from the time that the Rule of Law Framework was first activated through the public and intemperate rejection of all of its recommendations, the Commission has appeared unable to draw the logical conclusion from its own analysis and move closer to actually starting a sanctioning process.Footnote 51 This omission is all the more shocking because the actions of the Polish government in December 2016 openly defied a particular warning that it should not fill the position of Tribunal president before it had complied with the EU’s earlier warnings. By failing to act more forcefully as soon as the deadline laid down in its first Recommendation had expired, the Commission left Polish authorities ample time to prepare the ground for the effective capture of the Constitutional Tribunal not only in relative peace but also in plain disregard of the Polish Constitution.Footnote 52 Looking for any reason not to do what any reasonable assessment of the situation would lead any lawyer to conclude, the Commission decided to procrastinate further by seeking to get national governments to debate the Polish situation. This was done on 16 May 2017 within the framework of a meeting of the General Affairs Council, though it was discussed under the unpromising heading ‘any other business’. While the discussion was unprecedented and positive to the extent that the Commission’s diagnosis and recommendations appeared to have been strongly supported by most national governments, the session merely resulted in the following two-sentence conclusion:
The Commission informed the Council on the state of play of its dialogue with Poland on the rule of law. Ministers emphasised the importance of continuing the dialogue between the Commission and Poland.Footnote 53
In other words, having sought action from the Council, the Commission found itself tasked with more dialogue, much time having been wasted in the process with no tangible sign of any conforming behaviour in Warsaw and no deadline imposed for Article 7 to be invoked should Warsaw continue to ignore the Commission’s recommendations. As expected, the Council’s rather lukewarm support for the rule of law and persistent inability to unambiguously and publicly censure Polish authorities have since convinced the Polish ruling party that it was time to double down and capture the whole judicial system in plain sight. But instead of immediately triggering Article 7, the Commission decided once again to give more time for dialogue.
3. The Commission’s third Rule of Law Recommendation
Adopted on 26 July 2017, the Commission’s third Rule of Law Recommendation complements its previous two Recommendations.Footnote 54 This third Recommendation is justified by four new legislative acts rushed through the Polish Parliament that month: (1) The law on the Supreme Court; (2) the Law on the National Council for the Judiciary; (3) the Law on the Ordinary Courts’ Organisation; and (4) the Law on the National School of Judiciary. Together, they allowed the government to fire all judges of the Supreme Court and to replace the leadership of the lower courts, as well as to take over the system of judicial appointments from that moment forward. Even though the first two laws were unexpectedly vetoed on 24 July by the Polish President under massive pressure from street demonstrations, Kaczyński announced that he would not take no for an answer and vowed to introduce the laws again.
For the Commission, these laws, if they were to enter into force, would simply abolish the rule of law in Poland as they would ‘structurally undermine the independence of the judiciary in Poland and would have an immediate and concrete impact on the independent functioning of the judiciary as a whole’.Footnote 55 The Commission significantly diagnosed that the unconstitutional recomposition of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal already meant that ‘the constitutionality of Polish laws can no longer be effectively guaranteed’ and its judgments ‘can no longer be considered as providing an effective constitutional review’.Footnote 56 Even though the Commission’s own reasoning led it to conclude that there had been a complete breakdown of the rule of law in Poland, it could still not act. Instead, Frans Timmermans warned that ‘the option of triggering Article 7 of the Treaty was part of the discussion and it should come as no surprise to anyone that, given the latest developments, we are coming very close to triggering Article 7’.Footnote 57
Of course, any attempt to use the sanctioning arm of Article 7 against Poland alone was doomed as Viktor Orbán had already made a public commitment to defend Poland should the EU attempt to adopt sanctions under this Treaty provision.Footnote 58 So the Commission took a different route: it decided to initiate an infringement procedure regarding the Law on the Ordinary Courts Organisation on the grounds that this legislation would not only violate EU gender discrimination rules by introducing a different retirement age for female and male judges but it would also undermine the independence of Polish courts by permitting the government to replace the leadership of the lower courts, the independence of which would be required under Article 19(1) TEU and Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.Footnote 59
This emphasis on the possible violation of the principle of judicial independence is important as it may, if confirmed by the Court of Justice, give the Commission power to insist on major changes to the judiciary under the pain of Article 260 TFEU sanctions, where no Member State can block such a move.Footnote 60 In addition, a finding that judicial independence has been compromised could also lead to the suspension of the principle of mutual trust where Poland is concerned.Footnote 61 However, as will be shown below, the Commission has in the past tried to ‘tame’ Orbán’s autocratic behaviour via multiple infringement actions but this only led to Pyrrhic victories. It would also be naïve to think that the current Polish authorities will respond with anything but their usual disdain should the Court of Justice rule against them.
Indeed, in the context of another infringement action initiated by the Commission following increased logging in the Białowieża Forest, a protected Natura 2000 site, the Polish government has publicly indicated its intention to ignore the Court of Justice’s interim injunction to suspend all logging.Footnote 62 In the words of Poland’s environment minister, Poles ‘will not be insulted by those who don’t know about the rules of protection of environment’.Footnote 63 Similar defiant rhetoric has been used by Hungarian officials in their dealings with EU since Viktor Orbán appears to have understood US President Trump’s election as a licence to once again mock EU authorities and flout EU values in plain sight as it has moved to harass and close some of the last remaining independent civil institutions in the country that get funding from American sources.Footnote 64 And yet again, the Commission is proving reluctant to either submit Hungary to the Rule of Law Framework or trigger Article 7 in the face of overwhelming evidence that Orbán’s Hungary cares not a whit for the rule of law.
C. The Commission’s persistent refusal to activate the Rule of Law Framework against Hungary
Rather than offering an overview of the structural and continuing attacks on the rule of law in Hungary since Viktor Orbán returned to power – they have been well documented elsewhereFootnote 65 – the Commission’s reasons for not acting more forcefully against Hungary will be analysed here.
Before the latest set of attacks targeting the Central European University and civil society groups occurred in spring 2017, the European Parliament had made clear in December 2015 its concerns that there was a systemic deterioration of the situation in Hungary, highlighting among other things measures adopted against human rights of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, the functioning of the constitutional system, the independence of the judiciary, ‘and many worrying allegations of corruption and conflicts of interest’.Footnote 66 This diagnosis led the Parliament to call on
the Commission to activate the first stage of the EU framework to strengthen the rule of law’ so to as initiate ‘an in-depth monitoring process concerning the situation of democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights in Hungary, including the combined impact of a number of measures, and evaluating the emergence of a systemic threat in that Member State which could develop into a clear risk of a serious breach within the meaning of Article 7 TEU’.Footnote 67
The resolution further added that Hungary ‘is a test for the EU to prove its capacity and political willingness to react to threats and breaches of its own founding values by a Member State’ and noted that EU inaction may have contributed to similar developments taking place in some other Member States.Footnote 68
The Commission did not reply with a similar sense of urgency and threat. In her speech to the European Parliament before the adoption of this resolution, Věra Jourová, the Commissioner for Justice, argued that she saw no ‘grounds at this stage to trigger Article 7 or the Rule of Law Framework’.Footnote 69 After providing a shockingly long list of violations of EU law committed by Hungarian authorities – apparently not realising she was actually making an overwhelming case for more drastic action – the Commissioner concluded that ‘concerns about the situation in Hungary are being addressed by a range of infringement procedures and pre-infringement procedures, and that also the Hungarian justice system has a role to play’.Footnote 70
Jourová’s justifications of the Commission’s position failed to convince a majority of MEPs who correctly emphasised that the Commission’s approach ‘focuses mainly on marginal, technical aspects of the legislation while ignoring the trends, patterns and combined effect of the measures on the rule of law and fundamental rights’ and continues to ignore that infringement proceedings ‘have failed in most cases to lead to real changes and to address the situation more broadly.’Footnote 71 The European Parliament could have also pointed out that it is ludicrous to believe that the ‘Hungarian justice system’ could remedy to any serious extent the threats and breaches of EU values identified in the Parliament’s resolution because the independence and impartiality of the Hungarian judiciary had already been fatally undermined following repeated and ultimately successful attempts by Orbán’s ruling party to seize control over the appointment of judges, determine according to political criteria the viability of individual judge’s careers and seize the process through which cases were assigned to specific judges.
Orbán has since pushed through the Hungarian Parliament new laws that provide additional reasons for rule of law concern: an Act amending the National Higher Education Act which has the practical effect of singling out Central European University for effective closure (hence nicknamed Lex CEU) and a new Act on the Transparency of Organisations Receiving Support from Abroad that would stigmatise all NGOs and foundations receiving foreign money by requiring them to disclose all sources of income and label themselves as foreign funded.Footnote 72 These renewed attacks on academic freedom and civil society have however led to strong criticism not only from EU institutions but also individual EU Member States, the Council of Europe as well as and perhaps more surprisingly from the US government.Footnote 73 Most importantly, it led to the adoption of yet another resolution by the European Parliament on the situation in Hungary on 17 May 2017. This time, however, on the back of increasing uneasiness within the ranks of the European People’s Party regarding Orbán’s authoritarian behaviour and anti-EU rhetoric, the European Parliament crossed the Rubicon and called for preparations to be made for a vote on triggering Article 7(1) TEU.Footnote 74 In this resolution, the European Parliament noted that it:
9. Believes that the current situation in Hungary represents a clear risk of a serious breach of the values referred to in Article 2 of the TEU and warrants the launch of the Article 7(1) TEU procedure;
10. Instructs its Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs therefore to initiate the proceedings and draw up a specific report with a view to holding a plenary vote on a reasoned proposal calling on the Council to act pursuant to Article 7(1) of the TEU, in accordance with Rule 83 of its Rules of ProcedureFootnote 75
Faced with this renewed call for meaningful action, the First Vice-President of the Commission offered a new reason to justify the Commission’s inaction when asked whether it may have been easier to deal with the situation in Poland had the EU not turned ‘a blind eye to Victor Orbán’s actions’ for so long:
Poland and Hungary are different. Orbán and the Hungarian government have never refused a dialogue with us. A constructive dialogue, not only pointing at divergent views, is the European way of solving such disputes. But the truth is that a few times we have opened procedures against Hungarian handling of the law. And this has stopped, for instance, decrease of the pension age for the judges [by this means Orbán tried to eliminate established judges and introduce his own].Footnote 76
There are several rather obvious problems with this ‘defence’. First, it is hard to reconcile it with Jourová’s previous emphasis on the existence of national rule of law safeguards which, allegedly, would still be functioning and effective in Hungary contrary to the situation in Poland. Second, it suggests that would-be-autocrats are free to undermine the rule of law as long as they agree to enter into a dialogue with the Commission. Third, what the Commission may view as constructive dialogue with Orbán may be viewed by those with experience with the current Hungarian government as a façade of dialogue only. As shown by the multiple and recurrent violations of EU values listed by the European Parliament in its multiple resolutions on the ‘situation’ in Hungary, this dialogue has led only to minor tinkering with offending laws and to no substantial changes in the overall situation since the debate about Hungary’s descent into authoritarianism began.
The Hungarian’s answer to the latest infringement action initiated by the Commission with respect to the so-called Lex CEU also makes Timmermans’ ‘constructive dialogue’ thesis ring particularly hollow. Speaking of the letter of formal notice publicly announced by Timmermans on 26 April 2017, János Lázár, Orbán’s chief of staff, said that the ‘Commission was unable to present a single, normal legal argument which could be taken seriously,’ using the same defiant language deployed by Polish officials in their dealings with the EU.Footnote 77 Given that CEU has a deadline for compliance of October 2017 and there is no chance of getting a ruling from the Court of Justice by that time, the Hungarian government knows that it has already won the battle for CEU by appearing to engage in ‘dialogue’.Footnote 78
Finally, considering the Commission’s track record in bringing infringement proceedings, it is puzzling that Frans Timmermans still appears to believe that the Commission’s actions could lead to a successful outcome. To paraphrase him, ‘the truth’ is the opposite of what he suggested, as explained by Agnes Batory a professor at the Central European University:
compliance was creative (the judges were allowed to return to the courts, but not to the high administrative positions they had been removed from, since those had been filled during their forced early retirement; the ombudsman was given compensation but his position was not reinstated) or symbolic (with the government backing off only to appoint a Fidesz loyalist as Central Bank governor down the line). None of the concessions prevented the Hungarian government from achieving its partisan goals. Commission action amounted to little more than chipping away at the edges of a new constitutional order cementing a single political party’s hold on political power in an EU member state.Footnote 79
Even Věra Jourová no longer shares Frans Timmermans’ confidence in the effectiveness of infringement actions. Having noted ‘worrying trends’ in both Poland and Hungary, she argued that the imposition of any administrative steps, infringements or any other measures was unlikely to result in ‘any real change.’Footnote 80
There is arguably only one key difference which may explain, but not justify, why the Commission decided that it had no choice but to activate the Rule of Law Framework against Poland: in the absence of a supermajority to revise the Polish Constitution, the ruling party had to blatantly violate the Constitution in order to achieve its authoritarian goals while in Hungary, the government’s constitutional majority in the parliament allowed it to create an illiberal state by amending the constitution every time it was tempted to violate it. Indeed, in the Polish situation, the Commission was primarily seeking to get a Member State to comply with its own Constitution and stop undermining the independence and functioning of its Constitutional Tribunal, hence avoiding the potential neo-colonial criticism that might come from the EU requiring a Member State to follow EU law. In Hungary, the Commission seemed much less confident challenging laws that had been enacted in a domestically constitutional manner. With Hungary, the Commission’s default preference was to use the infringement procedure, which, given the way it has been deployed, has not produced any meaningful results because it aimed to reverse facts on the ground, something it did not have the power to accomplish. The reasons behind the failure of the EU institutions, and in particular, the Commission, to counter ‘constitutional capture’ and prevent rule of law backsliding will be further analysed below.
IV. THE LIMITS OF EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS IN PROTECTING EUROPEAN VALUES
The Treaties imagine that all European institutions play a role in protecting European values. The Commission may propose to trigger Article 7 TEU, but so may Member States, and the Parliament. While enacting any part of Article 7 TEU requires supermajorities of both Parliament and Council, it is unclear who should go first in framing the action and in determining its timing. Perhaps it is precisely this attempt to spread responsibility for European values across EU institutions that has resulted in the paralysis we have witnessed even while Member States attack the basic values of the European project. To sanction any Member State, the vast majority of – and in the case of sanctions, all – Member States must act together, just as the vast majority of MEPs must also agree, but no institution bears the primary responsibility for starting the process or ensuring that the record is compiled to sustain the charges.
While the European Commission should be commended for at least attempting to take the initiative in preventing rule of law backsliding via the adoption and application of a new instrument (Part IV.A), the Council has been, at best, missing in action. Not only has it repeatedly failed to rise to the challenge, but it has, at times, played an overtly counterproductive role (Part IV.B). And while the European Parliament has regularly adopted resolutions calling for action, it has itself proved so far unable to offer more than a critique of other EU institutions’ inaction, a situation which one may connect to the prioritisation of party politics by some of its members. So far the Parliament has never mustered the relevant supermajority to trigger Article 7 TEU on its own (Part IV.C). This section takes each of the major institutions one by one to show how the different pressures on each have made that institution ineffective in protecting European values.
A. The European Commission’s failings
Our main critique of the European Commission in failing to uphold the rule of law across the Union is this: both the design of the Rule of Law Framework and its subsequent application to Poland reveal the Commission’s failure to draw the right lessons from its past dealings with Hungary, where the Commission failed to halt the consolidation of power before it became entrenched. It was clear from the start that the Rule of Law Framework suffered from a crucial design weakness; it was entirely based on the highly questionable presumption that a discursive approach – a ‘constructive dialogue’ or a ‘broader political dialogue’ to paraphrase Frans Timmermans – could lead to positive outcomes.Footnote 81 But when a government is bent on deliberately undermining constitutional checks on power, dialogue only gives that government time to consolidate gains. While the Commission may be forgiven for failing to understand Orbán’s strategy when he first set out to create an ‘illiberal state’, it is difficult to understand how the Commission could still consider in 2015 that a period of ‘structural dialogue’ could restrain anyone else who was using Orbán as a model. If Member States stumbled into violating European values unawares, it might have been helpful to warn them. But if Member States are deliberately undertaking to become illiberal, then dialogue – itself premised on liberal values – is unlikely to work. Looking back, it should have been obvious that the non-legally binding nature of the rule of law recommendation(s), and the discretionary recourse to Article 7 TEU upon continued noncompliance were bound to produce fruitless discussions that failed to slow down the consolidation of power, as indeed the Polish case has since demonstrated.
The Polish saga has revealed another shortcoming: by further postponing the eventual triggering of Article 7(1) TEU, the activation of the Rule of Law Framework has given the Polish authorities time to further entrench legal changes that are clearly incompatible with Article 2 TEU while allowing the other EU institutions to believe that the Commission has the problem in hand. While the Commission may not have drawn the right lessons from its past dealings with Hungary, the current Polish authorities have been eager students of the Hungarian case. They have not failed to notice that the EU acts slowly and that there is not much the Commission can do if it is presented with a fait accompli. Once a government has created facts on the ground – packed courts, fired officials, purged institutions – the Commission’s tools fail to work. The Commission can virtually never force a change in an existing situation but only lay out ground rules for the future.Footnote 82 Poland’s ruling party must have understood that it would not be possible for the Commission in Poland – as it was not possible for the Commission in Hungary – to reinstate fired judges (or dismiss unlawfully appointed ones), insist on new members of no-longer-independent boards, restore civil society organisations closed by funding cuts or amplify the robustness of the opposition after state-sponsored bullying had scared people into leaving the country. During the rule of law ‘structured dialogue,’ Poland has seemed to speed up its program of undermining checks on power even as EU institutions appeared to have de facto delegated monitoring and follow up to the Commission, acting alone. During this time, other EU institutions were willing to wash their hands of this mess while the Commission appeared to be in charge so they aided and abetted the consolidation of power in Poland through inaction.
The Polish rule of law probe also exposed the Commission’s failure to foresee that the presence of two illiberal countries in the EU would annihilate the dissuasive nature of the sanctioning arm of Article 7(2–3) TEU, which requires a unanimous vote in the European Council before sanctions can issue. Poland and Hungary clearly saw this possibility, however, because Orbán quickly announced that Hungary would veto Article 7 sanctions as soon as the Commission launched the Rule of Law Framework against Poland.Footnote 83
The Polish case has further confirmed that the Commission’s discretionary power to activate the Framework could easily lead to like cases being treated as unlike for reasons of political convenience. Hungary, the case for which the Framework was designed, has still never been challenged under the Framework even though it carried out many of the same policies that caused the Framework to be activated in the Polish case. Some commentators have speculated that the Commission failed to act against Hungary because the powerful European People’s Party (EPP) protected an allied government while the Commission acted quickly against Poland, whose government was affiliated with the more marginal European Conservatives and Reformists (ERC) party.Footnote 84 It is otherwise difficult to convincingly explain why two similar cases should be treated so differently.Footnote 85
Had Hungary been subject to the Rule of Law Framework as requested by the European Parliament in December 2015, we could now be in a position to simultaneously subject both Poland and Hungary to sanctions under Article 7 TEU.Footnote 86 In doing so, one could argue that no country currently under Article 7 challenge should be able to protect another State similarly under challenge since any interpretation of Article 7 in the light of the effet utile principle should logically lead one to conclude that Poland and Hungary ought to lose their veto of sanctions against the other in such a scenario. Be that as it may, we submit that the Commission has failed in its duty to act as the guardian of the Treaties by not triggering Article 7 TEU against both Poland and Hungary even apart from the instrumental reason that Article 7 TEU is foiled by two rogue states acting in concert if sanctions are attempted against them one at a time.
The Commission has come to a cliff edge with Poland while having threatened on numerous occasions to take further steps with Hungary without consequence. But the Commission always stops before it can take serious steps. It seems to believe that it must secure the Council’s backing before activating Article 7(1) TEU, but this adds a political element which may be considered ill-advised for an institution that is supposed to act independently and whose insulation from politics was institutionally organised to enable it to take ‘difficult’ decisions in ensuring the uniform application of Union law. Pragmatically speaking, if the Commission triggered Article 7 TEU, it would finally oblige national governments, meeting in the Council, to face up to their own responsibilities to keep European values at the centre of the Treaties.
B. The Council: between lethargy and acquiescence
While our criticism has so far been directed at the Commission, the Commission’s inability to prevent rule of law backsliding in Hungary and Poland is due in no small part to the lack of any strong support originating from the European Council or the Council of Ministers. In the few instances where either Council has decided to move out of their usual torpor, their ill-advised interventions weakened the Commission’s authority.
Indeed, rather than unambiguously supporting the Commission’s Rule of Law Framework, national governments decided instead to establish their own ‘annual rule of law dialogue’, which is tragically ineffective because it asks EU countries to report on themselves without any independent check.Footnote 87 This inevitably tends to produce more self-congratulation than criticism, as indeed it has thus far. The Council’s rule of law dialogue scheme followed on the adoption of a poorly argued opinion by the Council Legal Service in which it denied the Commission’s authority to adopt its Rule of Law Framework.Footnote 88 Both this opinion and the decision not to explicitly support the Commission’s Framework were particularly disappointing and one may wonder what had happened to the countries, which just a few years before, asked the Commission to introduce a ‘new, light mechanism’ to enable it to make recommendations or report back to the Council ‘in the case of concrete evidence of violations’ of the EU’s fundamental values or principles.Footnote 89
During the Barroso Commission, the European Council remained completely silent on the situation in Hungary. Even in the Juncker Commission, when it became clear that Hungary was not an isolated case, the European Council broke its silence about the rule of law crisis only once. Then, European Council President Donald Tusk, himself a Pole, made a statement on the eve of a confrontation in Poland between governing party MPs and opposition protestors but only to suggest that all sides might behave themselves, and honour the Polish constitution.Footnote 90 The European Council, however, did not act as an institution and its component Member States largely refrained from comment. This abdication of the European Council as the one of the EU’s largest countries abandoned the rule of law reveals yet another weakness in the European project: a country that could meet the entry criteria to join the EU was presumed to retain its constitutional democratic commitments over the long haul so the EU gave itself few options to correct problems if a country’s commitments began to falter.Footnote 91
If the EU is not a community of values, however, it is only an economic shell. Amnesty International was therefore right to call for European governments to ‘step up to the plate and support the people of Poland by placing this serious threat to rule of law and human rights on the agenda of the Council’.Footnote 92 The Council, meeting in the General Affairs Council configuration, finally put the rule of law crisis on its agenda for the first time in 16 May 2017 and, in that session, a majority of Member States criticised Poland for its behaviour and lack of cooperation with the Commission. Only Hungary, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom, directly or indirectly supported Poland’s position.Footnote 93 However unprecedented, this was mere criticism, not a move toward deadlines, ultimatums or sanctions. And, as we have seen, the Council did not act but instead told the Commission to continue its dialogue with Poland. The Polish government’s rush to purge of the whole Polish judiciary soon afterwards showed the government clearly believed that nothing would happen to it if it did.
Speaking after the Council’s meeting but before the rule of law situation further deteriorated in July, Frans Timmermans, said: ‘All the tools are in the toolbox and if we need to use a tool in the toolbox, then the commission is free to do so.’Footnote 94 Time will tell whether the Council’s minimalistic support will finally convince – or at least not dissuade – the Commission to trigger Article 7 TEU against Poland. In the meantime, the European Parliament has begun a process to activate Article 7 against Hungary.
We understand that there may be indeed a cost to be paid if the Commission calls for the use of Article 7 and none of the other key EU institutions take any note of it. But to wait for a clear signal from a majority of national governments that Article 7 would succeed seems like a pretext for justifying inaction. Indeed, why would any national government explicitly signal its intent to support the Commission when there is no certainty the Commission would trigger Article 7? Such a public stand would require paying a diplomatic price with no guarantee that the Commission would follow through. Rather than trying to guess what the other EU institutions would do, the Commission should act in its role of guardian of the Treaties and do what the law requires rather than what the politics will sustain.
C. The European Parliament and the prioritisation of party politics
Of all the European institutions, the European Parliament has been the most vocal in its condemnation of rule of law backsliding in both Hungary and Poland. Early on, the Parliament took the lead in putting Article 7 on the table with regard to Hungary, when the Tavares Report was overwhelmingly adopted in 2013.Footnote 95 The Tavares Report was not even the first time that the Parliament took a stand: the European Parliament had previously passed repeated resolutions criticising particular laws, starting with Hungary’s media law and continuing through the constitutional overhaul.Footnote 96 The Tavares Report, however, broke ground in putting the concerns into one systemic framework. Regrettably, the Parliament’s call in the Tavares Report for Hungary to be carefully monitored by the Commission, with the goal of eventually triggering Article 7 TEU if Hungary did not change its ways, led to no concrete actions to address the specific issues listed in the resolution. Indeed, neither the Commission nor the Council took up the responsibilities that the Parliament had urged on them, and nothing public was done about Hungary’s backsliding.Footnote 97 Rather than seeking to trigger Article 7, which it could do on its own, the European Parliament got into the habit of regularly admonishing the Hungarian authorities and calling for other European institutions to get their acts together to address Hungary.Footnote 98 Finally, in May 2017, the Parliament adopted a (non-legislative) resolution on Hungary in which it delegated to the Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) the task of writing a resolution that would explicitly trigger the preventive arm of Article 7 TEU.Footnote 99
That said, a key factor explaining the European Parliament’s adoption of the resolution of 17 May 2017 was the weakening support for Orbán within the European’s People Party (EPP), currently the largest party in the European Parliament. Although at least half of the EPP members split from the party’s official position and allowed the Tavares Report to pass in July 2013, Orbán has so far been effectively shielded from criticism and meaningful sanctions by the leadership of the EPP.Footnote 100 It took blatant attacks on the Central European University in spring 2017 for the EPP leadership to finally give its members a free vote when the latest resolution regarding Hungary was put to a ballot.Footnote 101 This small concession has so far enabled EPP leaders to avoid an open rebellion and contain discontent without having to exclude the MEPs belonging to Orbán’s party. The primary and official reason given by the Chair of the EPP group at the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, to justify this stance is that Orbán’s engagement with the EPP and the EU at large, in contrast to the uncompromising attitude of Kaczyński, was a reason to support Orbán.Footnote 102 Considering Orbán’s rhetoric and actions since 2010, one cannot take this reasoning seriously.Footnote 103 Weber’s stance can only be explained by a less noble reason: losing Fidesz MEPs, who have been loyal members of the EPP when it comes to voting, would undermine the EPP’s primacy within the Parliament and its ability to appoint its members to the most powerful offices.Footnote 104
The EPP has had less difficulty calling for decisive action against Poland which one may link to the fact that Poland’s governing ‘Law and Justice Party’ belongs to the ERC, a relatively marginal parliamentary group in the European Parliament that is about to become even more marginal when Brexit takes the British Tories out of the party. And indeed, to give a single example, the resolution of 14 September 2016 on developments in Poland, which reiterated the Parliament’s concerns about the paralysis of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, was easily adopted by 510 votes out of the 699 votes cast. The EPP itself voted overwhelmingly in favour of the resolution with only its Hungarian members voting against it, along with a few MEPs from elsewhere.
These precedents suggest that support within the European Parliament for preventing or sanctioning rule of law backsliding in a particular country may only be secured when the two largest groups in the Parliament – the European People’s Party and the Socialists & Democrats group – have no self-interested reason to block the Commission’s actions.Footnote 105 This also means that it would be wrong therefore to lay the blame only at the door of the Commission for not having done more with respect to Hungary when it has a Council missing in action and the largest party in the Parliament doing its best to shield Orbán from EU censure. The politics of the rule of law in the EU are far less principled than they should be.
As we write, it remains uncertain whether the report called for in the resolution of 17 May 2017 that will propose activation of Article 7(1) TEU will secure the ‘two-thirds majority of the votes cast, representing the majority of its component Members’, as required by Article 354 TFEU. Based on the results of the vote on 17 May 2017 – when the resolution was adopted by 393 votes out of 678, ie 58% of the voting MEPs with abstentions included – defenders of the rule of law do not yet have the votes. Assuming the same reluctant attitude and mixed messages from EPP leadership, the activation of Article 7(1) will be a close call as it will require a two-thirds majority which should include at least 376 MEPs. Perhaps it would be easier to trigger Article 7(1) against Poland which, considering Polish authorities’ behaviour and record since January 2016, would also be amply justified.
In light of the above, one may conclude that there are three primary shortcomings of the EU answers to the ‘illiberal’ turn in Hungary and Poland:
-
∙ EU institutions have a tendency to procrastinate even when faced with evident and persistent breaches of EU values by would-be-authoritarians but procrastination only makes this particular problem worse.
-
∙ EU institutions’ default position is to hide their inaction behind strong rhetoric and to mask their ineffectiveness with symbolic compromises, declaring victory when facts on the ground have not changed.
-
∙ Partisan loyalties have so far been stronger than the rule of law.
It is only because the Polish authorities have been so blatantly uncompromising – even publicly rude – in their dealings with EU officials, so plainly undeterred in their attempts to destroy their own judiciary and so clearly undefended by a major pan-European party, that the Commission takes few risks in proceeding. By contrast, the Hungarian authorities know how to play the EU game by engaging symbolically and retreating strategically (if temporarily) when they must. Plus, the governing party in Hungary picked its political family well, as recently demonstrated by Jean-Claude Juncker’s public support for Orbán, a fellow member of the EPP.Footnote 106 In engaging in a semblance of dialogue and symbolic compliance when they must, the Hungarian authorities have done just enough to retain the support of the EPP leadership and to permit the Commission to claim that the dialogue continues, while still undermining the rule of law at every turn.
V. THE WAY FORWARD: LOOKING BEYOND ARTICLE 7 TEU TO PRESERVE THE RULE OF LAW
Save for an effet utile interpretation of Article 7 TEU that would allow a simultaneous Article 7 move against both Hungary and Poland to eliminate the veto of each in favour of the other, the presence of two illiberal EU countries means that the sanctioning arm of Article 7 has been effectively neutralised by the need for unanimity in the European Council. Against this background, officials, academics and civil society groups have proposed a range of ambitious solutions requiring Treaty change, such as rewriting Article 7.Footnote 107 It is however unrealistic to expect any Treaty change in this area if only because EU Treaties also require unanimity and Member States still in the crosshairs can be expected to veto such changes. As such, rather than discussing ‘pie in the sky’ type solutions, we will offer an overview of the most promising proposals for dealing with the rule of law crisis in the current moment. We begin with the recent and ambitious proposal adopted by the European Parliament (Part V.A), and then consider a number of additional proposals (Part V.B) before ending with what is, in our opinion, the most realistic outcome one may expect given the present circumstances (Part V.C).
A. The European Parliament’s proposal for a new mechanism
On 25 October 2016, the European Parliament recommended the establishment, ‘until a possible Treaty change’, of a new mechanism in the form of an interinstitutional agreement to more effectively monitor EU countries’ adherence to the values laid down in Article 2 TEU.Footnote 108 This mechanism would permit ongoing assessment of all Member States’ compliance with the rule of law so as to be able to spot deviating states early. The proposed new mechanism’s new features can be summarised as follows:
-
∙ Instead of the current ‘crisis-driven’ approach where EU institutions react to perceived breaches of Article 2 values in specific countries, the new mechanism would be a permanent one to which all EU Member States would be subject as a matter of principle.
-
∙ Called the DRF pact (Democracy, the Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights), the new mechanism also aims to guarantee compliance with EU values through preventative as well as corrective and sanctioning measures. Potential breaches at national level would be identified via new annual reports (DRF Report) that would include a general part and country-specific recommendations. This would be accompanied by a new monitoring cycle (DRF policy cycle) involving the main EU institutions, national parliaments as well as civil society, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency and the Council of Europe. The Commission would take the administrative lead when it comes to assessing compliance with Article 2 TEU on the basis of these new reports.
-
∙ To avoid political influence when it comes to assessing a country’s adherence to Article 2, a new expert panel (DRF Expert Panel) is to be set up and be made responsible for drafting the DRF report.Footnote 109
-
∙ To avoid confusion and duplication, the DRF report is supposed to incorporate into a single instrument the Commission’s Rule of Law Framework and the Council’s Rule of Law Dialogue as well as the Commission’s Justice Scoreboard, the Media Pluralism Monitor, the anti-corruption report and peer evaluation procedures based on Article 70 TFEU, which provides for the establishment of Member State monitoring mechanisms. It would also replace the existing Cooperation and Verification Mechanism for Bulgaria and Romania.
-
∙ In situations where evidence supports the conclusion that there are breaches of core elements of Article 2 values, the Commission is to start a dialogue with that Member State without discretion or delay.
-
∙ In situations where the DRF expert panel is of the view that there is a clear risk of a serious breach of Article 2 values and that there are sufficient grounds for invoking Article 7(1) TEU, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission shall each promptly discuss the matter and each institution shall adopt a reasoned decision which shall be made public.
-
∙ Finally, in situations where the DRF expert panel is of the view that there is a serious and persistent breach of Article 2 and that there are sufficient grounds for invoking Article 7(2), the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission shall each discuss the matter without delay and each institution shall adopt a reasoned decision which shall be made public.
The above proposal, which closely reflects the one made by Dutch ALDE MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld, should be commended for offering a comprehensive and potentially more effective, transparent and objective framework than currently exists.Footnote 110 It also positively reflects most of the recommendations made in two research reports commissioned by the European Parliamentary Research Service.Footnote 111 In particular, the proposed DRF pact creatively links the suggested DRF report with the possible launch of ‘systemic infringement actions’, which would bundle several infringements together to make the case that systemic violation is at issue, and calls for ‘the setting up of an endowment for democracy grant-giving organisation that supports local actors promoting’ Article 2 values within the Union.Footnote 112 Disappointingly, the Commission has since expressed its opposition to the Parliament’s proposal on the basis of reasons one may find as unpersuasive as the reasons put forward by the Commission to justify not triggering the Rule of Law Framework for Hungary:
At this stage the Commission has serious doubts about the need and the feasibility of an annual Report and a policy cycle on democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights prepared by a committee of “experts” and about the need for, feasibility and added value of an inter-institutional agreement on this matter. Some elements of the proposed approach, for instance, the central role attributed to an independent expert panel in the proposed pact, also raise serious questions of legality, institutional legitimacy and accountability. Moreover, there are also practical and political concerns which may render it difficult to find common ground on this between all the institutions concerned. The Commission considers that, first, the best possible use should be made of existing instruments, while avoiding duplication. A range of existing tools and actors already provide a set of complementary and effective means to promote and uphold common values. The Commission will continue to value and build upon these means.Footnote 113
This reaction to the constructive proposal of the European Parliament may be viewed as the latest example of the Commission simultaneously guarding its territory whilst shirking its responsibilities.Footnote 114 However, there is still one relatively easy way for the Commission to do more: it could more forcefully interpret and more vigorously apply its infringement powers by initiating ‘systemic infringement’ actions that would eventually subject the rule of law rogue states to financial sanctions should they fail to change course.
B. The (short-term) way forward: systemic infringement actions
Given the resistance of the Commission to political persuasion either outside or within the rule of law framework, the most promising solution in the short term may be for the Commission to respond legally by replying to systemic attacks on the rule of law through systemic infringement actions. Such actions would allow the Commission to rely on a familiar tool, while adjusting it slightly to meet the new challenges.
The European Commission is the Guardian of the Treaties, and so it is the Commission’s responsibility to ensure that the Treaties – including the values that form the basis of the Treaties – are in force across the Union. The infringement action is one of its standard tools for ensuring the consistent application of EU law. Even without the support of other EU institutions, the European Commission could adopt a more ambitious interpretation of its infringement powers by adjusting the normal infringement action in two ways to deal with Member States that systematically challenge the rule of law: (1) by packaging together a set of distinct complaints into a single infringement action, the Commission could show that it can connect the dots the same way that the autocrats do by acknowledging that the takeover of multiple independent institutions is part of a common plan to erode checks and balances; (2) by defending the view that systemic infringements call for a systemic remedy, the Commission could, if confirmed by the Court of Justice, insist on changes that would reverse the damage caused to the uniform application of European law across the Union.
The Commission could bring such a ‘packaged claim’ under Article 4(3) TEU by arguing that the Member State is systematically thwarting the realisation of EU law within its national legal system. Alternatively, it could bundle ordinary acquis violations together with violations of the Charter of Fundamental Rights to demonstrate that the combined set of violations rises to a more serious level than the typical infringement. In fact, the Commission has already done this once with regard to its initial objections to Hungary’s asylum policy, an approach it broadened when it issued its more comprehensive complementary formal notice against Hungary in asylum matters in May 2017.Footnote 115 Alternatively, the Commission could challenge a Member State for a violation of Article 2 values directly, under the rubric of the rule of law. After all, if it could trigger Article 7 to address rule of law violations, why couldn’t it use its ordinary powers to attempt a legal resolution of the matter before moving to the more political options laid down in Article 7?
If the Court of Justice agreed with the Commission that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts by finding a systemic violation of EU law, this would give the Commission more room to insist on systemic compliance with the principles of EU law rather than formalistic compliance with only the formal letter of the acquis. The intervention of the Court would also help depoliticise the whole issue, which is one of the main objections of governments that argue against any meaningful monitoring of their rule of law records by the Commission. Be that as it may, the systemic approach advocated here would crucially prevent cosmetic patches from disguising the underlying systemic problems. For example, when the Hungarian government replaced the existing data protection officer in violation of his EU-law-guaranteed independence, the rule of law required more than simply compensating the person who had been fired. Instead, some guarantee that the data protection function would still be independently performed as EU law requires would be important to ensure, but that was not done.Footnote 116 As we saw with the Commission’s piecemeal attempts to address the Hungarian government’s initial consolidation of power, the Hungarian government could easily meet very specific infringement actions with narrow if not largely useless gestures of compliance (for example, compensating the old data protection officer while the government’s new data protection officer dropped all of the cases brought by the former data protection officer that were contested by the government). Had the action been brought on the more ambitious argument that the right to data protection was under threat, then the remedies would address restoration of the infringed rights. A more comprehensive approach to compliance would allow the Commission to tailor the remedies to the nature of the problem identified.
If the Commission is unwilling to reinterpret the infringement procedure in this way, then Member States, as suggested by Professor Kochenov, could rediscover Article 259 TFEU and test this more comprehensive approach in the Court of Justice themselves.Footnote 117 Under Article 259 TFEU, one or more Member States can file an infringement action directly against another Member State for violating EU law and bring the matter before the Court of Justice without requiring the agreement of any EU institution. Rediscovering Article 259 could also be a way to push the Commission into acting, as an Article 259 TFEU action must go first to the Commission to see whether the Commission wants to join the action (thereby converting to an Article 258 TFEU infringement action), before the matter is eventually brought before the Court of Justice. Article 259 TFEU has the reputation of being used for losing causes but that is only because the Commission tends to avoid joining the frivolous ones even though those cases can still continue without the Commission on board. If a Member State invokes Article 259 TFEU to denounce a systemic threat to or breach of the rule of law in another Member State, it might not only spur the Commission to act under Article 258 TFEU when it is otherwise on the fence, but it also provides an avenue for the relevant Member State(s) to raise additional points before the Court of Justice.
Either way – whether the Commission brings an infringement action under Article 258 TFEU or one or more Member State(s) bring an action under Article 259 TFEU – the Court of Justice would then be offered an opportunity to decide whether systemic attacks on the rule of law and in particular on the independence of the national judiciaries or other institutions crucial for the correct application of EU law in Poland and Hungary should lead it to reconsider the principle of mutual trust.Footnote 118 In both Hungary and Poland, national courts have been (Hungary) or are in the process of being (Poland) captured by their respective governments so it is no longer possible to assume that EU law will be applied properly in cases in which the governments have a reason to avoid EU standards more systemically. Since the Commission has failed in its front-line responsibility to ensure that Hungary and Poland retain independent judiciaries, the Court of Justice will soon be faced with cases that will require it to think systemically about what to do when a whole judicial system has been politically compromised.Footnote 119
To borrow the analogy made by Professor Daniel Halberstam, the EU legal order may be viewed as a hydraulic system whose functioning depends on three interrelated conditions: a common set of values and similar level of fundamental rights protection throughout the Union; the Union’s ability to effectively remedy violations of its values at Member State level; and a safety valve for the Court of Justice to invoke overriding policy justifications where compliance with mutual trust would otherwise tear the Union apart.Footnote 120 Should one of these elements weaken, the remaining element(s) must be strengthened correspondingly. As a result, where any EU Member State ceases to comply with the most basic understanding of the rule of law but the EU institutions have otherwise failed to effectively correct the situation, the principle of mutual trust ought to be relaxed at the Court of Justice. Already there is a sign that the Court of Justice has endorsed Professor Halberstam’s analysis by relaxing the principle of mutual trust when Member States have been found by the European Court of Human Rights to breach Convention rights in a systemic way.Footnote 121
But this cautious approach of the Court of Justice, in which it allows specific exemptions from the principle of mutual trust only in the face of an adverse decision from the European Court of Human Rights, has not yet acknowledged that Member States may be in violation of basic values protected by the EU treaties beyond those also covered by the ECHR or certified by the European Court of Human Rights. Without an institution that can assess and monitor compliance with basic EU values, as the European Court of Human Rights does for ECHR rights, the Court of Justice may feel more reluctant to draw this systemic conclusion on its own. This is another reason why the Commission should, at the very least, monitor and document the state of the rule of law in problematic Member States.
Considering that mutual trust is such a bedrock constitutional principle of the EU, however, a persistent and systemic threat to this presumption may well signal a danger for the Union as a whole. If so, one may wonder what the Court would decide and what it would take as sufficient evidence of a rule of law breach. The Court of Justice may have no choice but to confront the issue of whether Polish courts after a successful political purge of the judiciary may still be considered independent and impartial courts able to provide effective legal protection. While the constitutionality of Polish laws can no longer be effectively guaranteed following the unconstitutional capture of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, as rightly noted by the Commission, the four laws designed to capture the ordinary judiciary pushed through in July 2017 (two of which have since been vetoed by the Polish President), ‘raise grave concerns as regards the principles of judicial independence and separation of powers’ and have the potential of structurally undermining ‘the independence of the judiciary in Poland’.Footnote 122 This might eventually raise the issue of whether Polish courts would no longer constitute ‘courts’ within the meaning of Article 267 TFEU, if the Polish ruling party is eventually successful in its attempts to purge and capture the national judiciary as a whole. As noted by Professor Sarmiento, in such a situation, Polish courts would not have ‘courts of law under the standards of EU law’ and should therefore lose their ability to communicate with the Court of Justice via national references for a preliminary ruling.Footnote 123 The same question may be raised in Hungary, where judicial appointments and careers are already in the hands of a political official following a purge of the leadership of the ordinary judiciary, as both the Venice Commission and International Bar Association have documented.Footnote 124 While the Commission has the luxury of avoiding whatever it does not want to face, the Court does not have such a convenient exit strategy when a case raising these issues is brought before it.Footnote 125
If a systemic infringement procedure results in an adverse judgment of the Court of Justice, and the Commission tries and fails to get the Member State in question to comply, the Commission could return to the Court under Article 260 TFEU to request a large fine, as befits a significant violation, and it could even seek penalty payments where relevant.Footnote 126 In fact, given the capacious wording of Article 260 TFEU, we see no reason why the Commission could not deduct the resulting fine from the funding streams that the EU has allocated to the offending Member State. Money is fungible, and withholding EU funds pending a successful removal of the infringement would provide an added incentive for the Member State to comply with the Court of Justice judgment. In fact, financial sanctions in an infringement procedure may be the most effective way to restore the rule of law considering the political constraints that seem to paralyse all of the EU institutions outside the litigation context. Indeed, Poland and Hungary are two of the largest recipients of EU regional and cohesion funding. The prospect of the Commission withholding EU funds until a Member State brought itself back into the rule of law fold may well concentrate the rogue states’ governments on actual and not just symbolic compliance.
As the recent example of Poland shows, new welfare benefits, seemingly unaffordable in the long term, are being used to ‘buy’ popularity while the capture of the Polish state is taking place.Footnote 127 This follows a pattern from Hungary, where state-owned utility rates were lowered before the last election to persuade voters that the governing party should be returned to office.Footnote 128 Putting a financial squeeze on the ability of these governments to buy popularity with electorates may not be a bad thing; such governments would have to run for office on their records instead. While suspending already committed EU funding would itself breach the rule of law in the absence of already in force provisions empowering EU institutions and bodies to do so, a number of options may be explored in the short term.Footnote 129 Attaching the suspension of funds to a judgment under Article 260 TFEU is one, but this is not the only possibility for withholding EU funds for rule of law violations. As suggested by Marek Grela, who was Poland’s first permanent representative to the EU, ‘the Commission could declare that the absence of independent judicial scrutiny and the sacking of experts means it can no longer certify that EU funds are being properly spent’, which ‘could justify additional safeguards before structural or agricultural funds are disbursed.’Footnote 130 EU money could also be rerouted through infra-national authorities, sidestepping the central government.Footnote 131 Direct or indirect financial support for civil society groups should also be considered.Footnote 132 More radically, one suggestion proposes to change the rules regarding the next EU budgetary period in order to allow for EU funding to be frozen when a country stops complying with the rule of law.Footnote 133
B. Proposals for the future: a new Article 2 conditionality requirement and/or multi-speed Europe
New approaches are clearly required. One proposal that has been suggested involves introducing a new conditionality requirement on EU funding that would require compliance with European values before funding could be awarded. In the words of Commissioner Jourová:
[We] need to ensure that EU funds bring a positive impact and contribute more generally to promote the EU’s fundamental rights and values. That is why I intend to explore the possibility to strengthen the “fundamental rights and values conditionality” of EU funding to complement the existing legal obligations of Member States to ensure the respect of the Charter when implementing EU funds.Footnote 134
This new requirement has been explicitly proposed with the situation in Poland in mind as it has been allocated a total of €86 billion from various EU cohesion funds for the period 2014–2020 and would, under normal circumstances, expect substantial funds in the next budget cycle as well.Footnote 135 Preparatory work is supposed to begin this year, with Commissioner Jourová warning that eligibility criteria for EU structural funding as well as the future of the EU cohesion policy are going to be reviewed.Footnote 136 Significantly, the suggestion to condition EU cohesion funding on ‘compliance with fundamental principles of the rule of law’ has since received the explicit support of Germany and been confirmed by the (German) Commissioner in charge of the budget but not the support, rather surprisingly, of the President of the European Commission himself.Footnote 137
There is no strong appetite to trigger Article 7 against both Hungary and Poland, but linking EU funding with Article 2 compliance may be more popular, especially given the extra pressure on the EU budget that the UK withdrawal from the EU will create.Footnote 138 A number of counterarguments may however be raised, among which one may mention the implicit assumption that rule of law backsliding remains primarily a problem for countries that are large recipients of EU funding and that this solution therefore appears discriminatory.Footnote 139
Should this solution fail to materialise and other measures fail to contain or prevent rule of law backsliding, it is then likely that calls for a multi-speed Europe or a two-tiered EU with a more deeply integrated and institutionalised Eurozone are bound to grow louder.Footnote 140 Hungary and Poland are both outside the Eurozone, so calls to more strongly integrate the Eurozone and leave the others behind may well allow the rule of law states to leave the non-rule-of-law states behind in a second-tier Europe without the need to take note explicitly of rule of law problems.
Faced with the choice between seeing cohesion funds conditioned on values compliance or being relegated to a second-tier Europe as the rest of the Member States forge ahead, governments in Central Europe may soon, in the words of Ivan Krastev, ‘be forced to choose between a future of deeper integration with Western Europe, or a future where Central Europe is increasingly marginalized’, that is, according to the author, ‘a choice between Emmanuel Macron and Viktor Orbán’.Footnote 141 Should other Member States choose multi-speed Europe instead of direct EU sanctions, we could then see the institutionalisation of a new European configuration, with core EU countries flanked by ‘a buffer zone of semi-autocratic member states on its eastern border’.Footnote 142
VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS
During the French presidential election campaign, Emmanuel Macron warned that one cannot have a country engaged in social and fiscal dumping ‘while being in breach of all its principles’.Footnote 143 Poland was the clear target of this remark. The newly elected French President added that ‘one cannot have a Europe debating the decimal point of every single one of the national budgetary issues and which decides to do nothing when you have an EU Member State behaving like Poland or Hungary on topics relating to university and knowledge, refugees or fundamental values’.Footnote 144
Coincidentally or not, Macron’s election was rapidly followed by the first ever discussion in the Council of the rule of law situation in a specific Member State (about Poland), the first ever parliamentary vote to prepare the ground for triggering Article 7 (against Hungary) and increasing pressure on both Poland and Hungary from the Council and the Commission with respect to the EU refugee resettlement scheme.Footnote 145 Given what we have seen already, however, one should not expect any effective rule of law improvements in Hungary and Poland if the European institutions continue to believe in the (illusory merits) of a ‘constructive dialogue’ approach with autocrats. We should also not expect improvements in the situation if European parties, particularly the EPP, continue to shield their members from European enforcement actions. But perhaps the most discouraging and damning reaction of all is the reaction of most of the other Member States so far to the rule of law crisis in the EU, a reaction characterised by complete and total silence.
But the Member States who believe themselves to be unaffected are not protected against the influence of creeping autocracy within the EU. The popular anger and party malfunctions that brought Fidesz to power in Hungary and PiS to power in Poland are not confined to those two countries. Across the EU, we see signs of increasingly popular autocratic leaders coming closer and closer to power. EU Member States need to wake up to the fact that the actions of Hungary’s Orbán and Poland’s Kaczyński provide a model that can easily spread to other EU countries led by populists with autocratic ambitions. Even apart from a desire to preserve the rule of law in Poland and Hungary, EU institutions ought to take seriously the threat these countries represent to liberal constitutional democracy as such. The more States fall victim to the siren song of populism, the harder it will be to solve the problem within EU institutions. Better to fix the problems while the EU still can.
VII. POSTSCRIPT
In his State of the Union Address given on 13 September 2017, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, strongly emphasised the importance of the rule of law for the EU and appeared to implicitly criticise Hungary and Poland when he stressed that ‘accepting and respecting a final judgement is what it means to be part of a Union based on the rule of law. Member States gave final jurisdiction to the European Court of Justice. The judgements of the Court have to be respected by all. To undermine them, or to undermine the independence of national courts, is to strip citizens of their fundamental rights’.Footnote 146 Rather unexpectedly, the Commission’s ‘Roadmap for a More United, Stronger and More Democratic Union’ published on the same day refers to a new ‘initiative to strengthen the enforcement of the Rule of Law in the European Union’ to be launched before the end of 2018 ‘with a 2025 perspective’.Footnote 147 It is not yet clear what this new initiative may entail and the Commission’s rationale for doing so following the recent adoption by the European Parliament of the so-called DRF Pact proposal. One may only hope that this ‘initiative’ will not be used to justify further procrastination. With the rule of law situation in Poland due to be discussed for the second time by the General Affairs Council on 25 September at the Commission’s request, and continuing systemic attacks on the rule of law by the Polish ruling party, it is to be hoped that the Commission will finally conclude that the time has come to put an end to the dialogue charade and trigger Article 7(1) TEU so as to oblige national governments to face up to their own responsibilities to keep European values at the centre of the Treaties.
