scholarly journals Efforts to Disrupt the Authoritarian Equilibrium within the EU. Effects and Counter-effects

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 723-741
Author(s):  
Krisztina Juhász

Abstract The study, leaning on the concept of ‘authoritarian equilibrium’ introduced by R. Daniel Kelemen on the one hand, and new intergovernmentalism as a fresh theoretical approach of the European integration on the other hand, investigates if we can talk about the disruption of the ‘authoritarian equilibrium’ as a consequence of the split up between Fidesz and the EPP, and the adoption of the rule of law conditionality mechanism. In other words, whether we can talk about an initial authoritarian dis-equilibrium? Or can we rather talk about a converse process due to the mechanisms of new intergovernmentalism resulting in the further stabilisation of authoritarian governments and the ineffectiveness of the EU measures devoted to the protection of rule of law? Using qualitative resource analysis of the relevant secondary literature and the documents and legal acts of the EU and its institutions the paper comes to the conclusion that while we have witnessed efforts to disrupt the partisan and the financial support of the Hungarian governing party, these efforts were neutralised by the mechanisms of new intergovernmentalism and as a consequence we still cannot talk about an initial authoritarian disequilibrium in the EU.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hsi-Ping Chen

The German Law on public procurement remedies, implementing the EU Remedies Directives into national law, has to engage in a balancing act between effective legal protection of bidders and the necessary acceleration of the award procedure. The book develops solutions for conflicts between the abovementioned opposing interests, which are consistent with the pluralistic paradigm of the European legal area, and the standards of assessment of the EU primary substantive law on public procurement. The Europeanisation of the German Law on public procurement remedies is analysed in detail. The work deals with the establishment and improvement of effective legal protection of bidders on the one hand and, on the other hand, shows that the acceleration of the award procedure within the framework of the procedural system is bounded by the rule of law. The book carves out strengths and deficits of the German Law on public procurement remedies.


2020 ◽  

In the years before the Covid-19 crisis confronted the world with unprecedented challenges, the EU showed two sides of itself: On the one hand, it gave cause for hope, having overcome several crises and presenting itself to the world as a defender of multilateralism and a stronghold of democracy. On the other hand, however, its weaknesses remained visible: its lack of coherence in foreign and security policy; its insufficient influence in its neighbouring regions; and its internal contradictions with regard to upholding the rule of law among its member states. The essays gathered here offer a review of two years of EU politics. With contributions by Laurent Baechler, Anna Dimitrova, Mohamed Ane, Sebastian Franzkowiak, András Inotai, Gabriel N. Toggenburg, Arnaud Leconte, Kyriakos Revelas, Hartmut Marhold, Jean-Claude Vérez, Jean-Marie Rousseau, Susann Heinecke, Florent Marciacq, Tobias Flessenkemper, Magda Stumvoll, Marta-Claudia Cliza, Laura-Cristiana Spataru-Negura, Claude Nigoul, Pinar Selek, Yvan Gastaut.


Author(s):  
Attila Vincze

Abstract This chapter deals with shortcomings of the EU policies vis-à-vis Hungary and partially also Poland. Firstly, it depicts the argument that the EU’s diagnosis of illiberal backsliding is too narrow. When assessing the quality of democracy in Hungary and Poland, the Commission and the European Parliament almost exclusively focus on recent constitutional changes, and thereby overlook many other deficits which lead to a distorted picture. Secondly, there is a legitimate debate on the meaning of the basic values of the EU. Article 2 TEU contains many open-textured expressions, which might be understood differently. Thirdly, due to the incomplete diagnosis, the instruments currently being used to combat backsliding tendencies seem ill-suited on the one hand, and, on the other, the EU surprisingly does not seem to make best use of currently available tools. The chapter concludes by highlighting and discussing possible improvements of EU strategies towards backsliding states.


2020 ◽  
pp. 174387212097533
Author(s):  
Johan van der Walt

This short article on Peter Fitzpatrick’s conception of “responsive law” analyzes the ambiguous temporality that Fitzpatrick discerned in modern law. On the one hand, law makes the claim of being fully present and therefore already and completely contained in itself. This aspect of law reflects the law’s claim to “immanence,” that is, its claim of always being able to rely strictly on its own operational terms without having to take recourse to any consideration not already contained within itself. It is this aspect of law that renders the ideal of the “rule of law” feasible. On the other hand, the law’s claim to doing justice to every unique and therefore every new case also demands that it takes leave of that which is already settled within it. This aspect of law can be called its “imminence.” The imminence of the law concerns the reality that law always finds itself on the threshold of that which has not yet been said and must still be said. The article shows how Fitzpatrick relied on Freud’s concept of the totem to explain the “wondrous” unity of its immanence and imminence.


Author(s):  
Nesiah Vasuki

This chapter examines the utopias called forth by the marriage of human rights accountability mechanisms on the one hand, and, on the other, arguments about the practical significance of these initiatives as preconditions for development, democracy, and political society. Transitional justice is seen to marry the ethical charge of the human rights field’s march against impunity, with an instrumental potential facilitating transition from the rule of violence into the rule of law. If the normative theories and agendas implicated by this marriage are advanced as being in the interests of justice, the accompanying instrumental theories and agendas are advanced in the interests of transition. Justice and transition operate here as allied and mutually reinforcing aspirations of and rationales for transitional justice institutions. Thus, this chapter identifies and analyses the stakes that attend this marriage of ‘ethics’ and ‘expertise’ in constituting the utopian political imagination of transitional justice.


2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 552-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Safjan

In some countries of central Europe the rule of law is directly threatened by a new type of legislation based on the zeal of the political majority to establish a completely different political system than the one that was built after the collapse of the communist system. From that perspective, there is little place for the principle of separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary is threatened. This contribution discusses the multilevel dimension of the rule of law principle in the EU, issues in the context of the disrespect for the rule of law as a case of systemic deficiencies, followed by a brief discussion of the Copenhagen accession criteria. The article concludes that the rule of law principle as recognised under EU law is by no means of a merely symbolic nature, and that domestic legislation abolishing key safeguards of the rule of law can be scrutinized not only under the EU Charter of fundamental rights, where applicable, but also under the TEU. Without the solidarity of all Europeans, however, the preservation of our basic values and the future of the EU are in serious danger.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-120
Author(s):  
Teodora Aurelia Drăghici ◽  
Gabriel Cătălin Predescu

Abstract The legal significance of the right to health care, in particular and of other fundamental rights in general, on the one hand unknown to citizens and on the other hand known, minimized or ignored by state authorities and institutions, will certainly lead to abuses of law coming from the latter, abuses that cannot be tolerated by the rule of law.


2021 ◽  
pp. 145-156
Author(s):  
Karol Piwoński

The aim of this article is to analyse the position and role of the European Commission in the procedure provided in the regulation on a general regime of conditionality for the protection of the European Union’s budget. For this purpose the scheme of this procedure was analysed, by interpreting the relevant regulations using the dogmatic method and considering opinions of the EU institutions and views of the scholars. A comparative method has also been applied. The new position of the Commission in the procedure for protection of the EU budget has been compared with the position it plays in the existing instruments. The analysis made from the point of view of the position of individual institutions in the new procedure, although it does not allow predicting how they will be implemented. The conducted analysis demonstrates that the European Commission – an institution of Community character – has gained wide competences, and in applying them it has been given a wide range of discretion. On the one hand, the introduced regulations exemplify a new paradigm in creating mechanisms for protection of the rule of law. On the other hand, they raise doubts as to their compliance with EU law. However, they undoubtedly constitute a decisive step towards increasing the effectiveness of the EU's instruments for the rule of law protection.


European View ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-104
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Margaritis

The rule of law is one of the founding values of the EU, as indicated in Article 2 TEU. This provision recognises that the rule of law is a core value, inherent to liberal democracy, and one which characterised the Union and its member states long before the formal establishment of the EU by the Maastricht Treaty. However, several member states, most notably Poland and Hungary, seem to have placed this value in jeopardy, leading EU institutions to disagree on how to combat this problem and its political consequences. The aim of this article is to propose a solution that involves a rather neglected, yet certainly competent actor, the Fundamental Rights Agency. The outcome would be twofold: on the one hand, the rule of law would be vitally strengthened; on the other, the role of the Agency would be fortified in line with its scope.


2020 ◽  
pp. 243-266
Author(s):  
Ioannis E. Tzamtzis

The contrast between Rome’s difficult and bloody conquest of Crete on the one hand and the absence of any conflicts after the island’s integration into the Roman imperium on the other has not escaped the notice of modern scholars. It has often led to the suspicion that the conquerors had, from the start, disempowered the institutional idiosyncrasies of the conquered. However, careful scrutiny of the literary and epigraphic sources allows for the development of a more complex picture. That picture depends partly on the density of political, military, and institutional events that befell Crete in the last third of the first century BCE, and partly on the interaction between Roman legal culture and a Dorian mentality profoundly rooted in the island’s population. From the artificial creation of a provincia Creta-Cyrenaica (following a twofold military campaign and a conflict between Q. Metellus and Cn. Pompeius) to the experience of the confederative Creta libera, led by a Kretarchas, under the triumvirate; from the conservation of the ‘Gortyn code’ at the turn of the first century CE to the syssitia of Lyttos at the end of the second; from the introduction of the Campanian factor on the territory of Cnossos by Octavian to the persistent memory of a semi-proprietary system for the agricultural exploitation of the Messara plain: the composition of the Cretan legal landscape in the time of the Late Republic and the Principate is reminiscent of a Mediterranean fresco. This composition will be outlined in this chapter in order to give a more nuanced picture of Crete’s legal culture.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document