A new report shows many European Union member states consistently fail to implement rulings from both the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). That’s claimed in the latest findings of Democracy Reporting International (DRI), published on September 19th.
While ignoring or openly challenging these rulings seems to be an EU-wide issue, the European Commission only punishes those who stand against it politically and looks the other way when faced with sympathetic governments.
It’s worth noting that these rulings about alleged human rights or rule-of-law violations are way too often seen by member states as overreach by the courts to influence the democratic decision-making of sovereign states. The rulings consistently involve areas that should fall under member states’ competencies, such as migration, border control, education, and LGBT issues.
Still, the numbers alone, as presented in this paper, perfectly highlight Brussels’ hypocrisy when it comes to using the rulings as justification for waging ‘lawfare’ against countries that refuse to submit to its ideological agenda.
Double standards
The study was published just days after the European Commission decided to subtract the sum of an unprecedented €200 million fine from Hungary’s EU funds as the country was penalized by the ECHR for requiring migrants to apply for asylum before, and not after, entering the country—to prevent rejected asylum seekers from disappearing in the Schengen area.
While Hungary only ranks fourth from the bottom on the ECHR implementation list, surrounded by plenty of ‘seriously’ or ‘moderately’ problematic countries, no other member state is given the same treatment.
The Greek center-right government is constantly accused of mistreating migrants, but since it belongs to Ursula von der Leyen’s centrist EPP group, nobody bats an eye. Poland’s billions of frozen EU funds were almost immediately released once its conservative government was ousted from power on merely the promise of addressing the rule-of-law problems. Bulgaria’s EPP-member ruling party is also off the hook, and von der Leyen even handpicked a commissioner from its ranks despite resurfaced allegations of her role in one of the country’s biggest corruption scandals. Italy, Spain, and even the number one offender—the Brussels-friendly Romania—were given executive vice presidencies in the incoming Commission.
On the record
The nearly 160-page study found that EU member states have implemented only about half of the European court’s rulings in the past five years, with the number of pending cases steadily increasing every year.
As of January 2024, there were 624 ECHR judgments pending full implementation in the EU, as opposed to 616 a year before, and 602 at the end of 2021. Over 44% of the leading judgments from the past decade have not been implemented yet (the same number stood at 37.5% in 2021), while the average time for implementation climbed to five years and two months last year, ten months more than two years prior.
The study ranked each EU country by comparing them on three counts (number of pending cases, percentage of pending cases from the last decade, and average time of implementation) to give them an overall assessment of where they stand with ECHR rulings.
Only Sweden has an “excellent” record, and ten others qualify for the “good” or “very good” labels. Four in ten member states, however, fall into one of the bad categories, including Belgium, Cyprus, Malta, Slovakia, and Spain which do “moderately poorly;” Greece alone is “problematic;” and five countries have “very serious problems:” Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Romania—in that order.
Romania is at the bottom of the table with the highest number (115) of human rights violations yet to be addressed, a 59% pending rate from the last decade, and an average of five years and five months needed to implement each ruling.
On the other hand, Bulgaria has the worst track record in average implementation time with six years and nine months, while Hungary has the highest percentage of pending cases at 76%
With regards to alleged rule-of-law violations and the related rulings of the CJEU, the report only deploys three categories: “good,” “moderate,” and “struggling.” The latter category only includes four countries: Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the ‘worst offender,’ Poland.
The report also notes that some countries like to openly challenge CJEU rule-of-law judgments and the “primacy of EU law,” which “undermines” the courts’ and Brussels’ authority. Some do this “openly and confrontationally,” like Romania and Poland; others more “indirectly,” such as Hungary. France and Germany also tend to challenge rulings, the paper notes, but not systematically enough to warrant a lower grade for them.
It’s clear that the EU court rulings are weaponized by the Commission only when they serve its purpose—against sovereigntist, conservative governments—and treated as arbitrary opinions when they concern allies of the establishment.
