The politics of guarding the Treaties: Commission scrutiny of rule of law compliance

ABSTRACT

Commission's expectations on eventual compliance explain its different behaviour when dealing with Rule of Law (RoL) crises in Hungary and Poland. Whilst the Commission activated the first stage of the procedure of article 7 against Poland in December 2017, it resisted to launch the same procedure against the Hungarian government despite mounting criticism and demands from both academics and EU institutions. The Commission considers that compliance depends, on last instance, on the cooperation of domestic authorities. Accordingly, it prefers to engage with them in dialogue and persuasion rather than activating enforcement mechanisms. If engagement strategies fail to obtain compliance, the Commission anticipates the consequence of activating article 7 enforcement: whether it can rely or not on Council support and the effects of not having it and it also anticipates negative consequences such as the future attitude of the affected member state vis-á-vis the EU.

KEYWORDS:

• Compliance with EU law
• enforcement of EU law
• EU Commission
• Rule of law
• institutional behaviour

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of the project Institutional design in comparative regional integration (InDeCRI) (CSO2016-76130-P) https://www.researchgate.net/project/Institutional-Design-in-Comparative-Regional-Integration-InDeCRI which is supported by a grant from the Spanish Research Agency. I presented a former version of this paper with the title The Commission and article 7. Explaining inaction … praising action? at EUSA, Miami 4-6 May 2017 and the ECPR General Conference, Oslo 6-9 September 2017. I thank Tanja Börzel, Johannes Pollack and the participants in both panels for their insightful comments; to Elin Helquist for her insights into sanctions literature to her and Daniela Vintila for their kind comments on an earlier draft. Two JEPP anonymous referees have also provided excellent feedback on the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Carlos Closa is Professor at the Instituto de Políticas y Bienes Públicos (IPP), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain and member of the faculty at the School of Transnational Governance (STG) at the EUI, Florence, Italy.

ORCID

Carlos Closa http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2935-1926

Notes

1. The Commission officials are anonymized (and their names substituted by letters) while the former Commissioners are not, since their views are publicly known. Numbers refer to the order in the series of quotations extracted from the interview with this person.

2. Juncker rebukes Hungary's EU Commissioner 2 December 2015 https://euobserver.com/institutional/131353.

3. Adelina Marini EP pushes for strong Rule of Law Mechanism, Council and Commission are against 2 March 2015 http://www.euinside.eu/en/news/alde-want-a-democratic-governance-pact-but-no-will-for-that

4. Kuczkiewicz, Jurek Juncker au «Soir»: «Il y a un sérieux problème de gouvernance en Europe» 5 novembre 2016 http://www.lesoir.be/1360084/article/actualite/union-europeenne/2016-11-04/juncker-au-soir-il-y-un-serieux-probleme-gouvernance-en-europe

5. Andrew Rettman Macron and Merkel take tough line on Poland EU Observer 15 December 2017 https://euobserver.com/justice/140320

6. Barigazzi, Jacopo and Quentin Ariès Commission’s Orban plan: talk, threaten and seek allies 12 April 2017 http://www.politico.eu/article/commission-goes-with-stick-and-carrot-approach-to-hungary-viktor-orban/

7. Interview: Timmermans: ‘Poland should be a leader in Europe – but it needs to cooperate’ by Bartosz T. Wieliński, Gazeta Wyborcza http://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/interview/timmermans-poland-should-be-a-leader-in-europe-but-it-needs-to-cooperate/

Additional information

Funding

This paper is part of the project Institutional design in comparative regional integration (InDeCRI) (CSO2016-76130-P) https://www.researchgate.net/project/Institutional-Design-in-Comparative-Regional-Integration-InDeCRI which is supported by a grant from the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación; Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España.