EU multilevel governance and the rule-of-law conditionalities

Abstract

Defining and assessing rule-of-law benchmarks in the EU context has become widespread, especially in the field of legal scholarship. However, few discussions have been dedicated to the real political implications of the EU’s use and expansion of its rule-of-law conditionality toolbox. The debate on the rule of law in the EU intensified during the COVID-19 crisis, especially in the context of the adoption of the general conditionality regime to protect the EU budget in 2020 which has already led to precedent-setting budgetary blocks for Hungary and Poland. Although established in response to specific crises, this instrument will have long-lasting structural impact for the EU multilevel governance system. To date, there have been few comprehensive empirical analyses examining the nature of the process of EU rule-of-law budget conditionality negotiations and the potential impact of the instrument. The papers in this panel thus analyse how the use of these rule-of-law conditionalities have impacted the EU as an institution, as well as how the conditionalities have affected the domestic landscape in Hungary and Poland. The papers in this panel seek to address questions of how and why the conditionality instruments became politically feasible? Furthermore, what does the unprecedented use of budget conditionality instruments mean for the multilevel governance system, the institutional nature, and for the power dynamics between intergovernmental and supranational as well as subnational interests within the EU? Likewise, how have Hungary and Poland responded to this turning point of EU funds blockage? In sum, this panel brings together papers that focus not only on the legal but highlight especially the hitherto understudied political implication of the EU rule-of-law budget conditionality.

Title	Details
Crafting enforcement, money talks: the EU Conditionality Regulation case	View Paper Details
Will the EU Escape Its Autocracy Trap?	View Paper Details
Conditionality and the EU responses to COVID-19: Multilevel governance and political legitimacy	View Paper Details
Hungary and Poland: ‘Bargaining’ for EU structural funding in an age of rule-of-law budget conditionalities	View Paper Details