The European Commission published its annual Rule of Law Report on Wednesday, July 5th, which is a detailed assessment of the main democratic shortcomings of all EU member states, complete with recent achievements and further recommendations. Overall, the rule of law situation has improved across the bloc since last year, but no member state is perfect.
This is the fourth time Brussels has published the comprehensive report, with the outspoken aim of letting member states know in which areas they are expected to deliver improvements and to follow up on the initiated reforms.
The 2023 edition, just like all previous reports, focuses on four key areas—including judicial systems, anti-corruption, media freedom, and institutional checks and balances—the developments of which are discussed both EU-wide and broken down into individual country chapters.
The Commission noted that overall, the publishing of the report has a significant positive impact on rule of law development across the EU, and that “almost 65% of the specific recommendations issued last year to member states have already been followed up.” However, it also admits that full implementation was observed in only about 25% of the cases, while 40% of the reforms are incomplete, and “no progress was noted on the remainder”—35%.
Of course, the publishing of these recommendations is not the sole reason member states moved to improve their democracies. The report notes that recent years saw the development of “a broader toolbox” to safeguard the rule of law, which includes infringement procedures, institutional mechanisms (such as Article 7), and “policy drivers” such as the pandemic recovery funds, which were tied to certain rule of law criteria.
In other words, the Commission is basically saying that they have become very good at blackmailing countries into doing what they are told, lest they want to risk the same treatment Poland and Hungary have been getting for years and have tens of billions of EU funds withheld from them indefinitely.
Speaking of Poland and Hungary, the two Central European countries continue to be in the spotlight, especially with regard to the first pillar, judicial independence. In Poland, for example, the report notes that there has not been enough progress in separating the prosecution from the government. To this, even Politico had to admit that the situation is more or less the same in several EU countries, including Germany and Austria.
On media freedom, the report has something to say to nearly all member states, as news media concentration continues to be problematic across the entire bloc. The “high risk” countries are Malta, Slovenia, Greece, Cyprus, and Croatia, while the “very high risk” are Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, and Hungary. Again, Bucharest and Sofia do not seem to get nearly as much criticism from Brussels as the other two, do they?
The lack of proper anti-corruption infrastructure is another EU-wide problem, with the vast majority of Europeans identifying corruption as a major problem in their own countries, and over half of them believe that corrupt individuals are technically above the law.
The checks and balances segment talks about the role of Ombudsmen and other independent authorities and human rights institutions, as well as the use and alleged abuse of emergency measures adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, with Portugal, Finland, Latvia, and Hungary named as problematic.
Overall, the only real takeaway seems to be that no country is perfect. Despite Warsaw and Budapest taking center stage in public discussions, every other member state has its own specific set of problems. And while Poland and Hungary are at least making considerable progress in most areas, as the report noted, many Western member states have the same shortcomings as they had last year.
