Conflicts of Sovereignty in Safeguarding the Rule of Law at the Supranational Level

In recent years, the rule of law has become a bone of contention in the European Union. The judicial reforms undertaken in Hungary, Poland and Romania have attracted a great deal of attention, giving rise to questions about, on the one hand, the state of democracy in these countries and, on the other hand, the EU’s role in safeguarding the common values enshrined in the treaties. While various scholars have sought to understand how the EU should address these challenges from a political and legal point of view, this paper will scrutinize contestation over the rule of law. Considering that opposition to the action of the EU is not only expressed by the parties in office in Poland, Hungary and Romania but also in Austria, the aim of this paper is to map and scrutinize the arguments of those arguing in these four cases that the EU should not act in fields that touch on the State sovereignty and undermine the EU’s diversity. In addition of examining recent debates at the domestic and EU level, the article will provide a cross-time theorization about conflicts over the rule of law since 2000s onwards. The paper draws on content analysis, scrutinizing the arguments of political, legal and social actors involved in the debates about the rule of law in Hungary, Poland and Romania.