A Europe of Crises. Democracy, Illiberalism and the Future of European Polity

2nd Seminar of the "Regulation Seminar series".

Speaker: Roila MAVROULI - CNRS, PostDoc Research fellow - HEC Paris.

Room 036, T building. All the seminars will be held face to face and simultaneously broadcasted online. 

The seminar will feature a research project on, "A Europe of Crises: Democracy, Illiberalism and the Future of European Polity". 

Find the abstract below:

Many different theses have marked the future and continuity of the European Union (EU) which is now affected by a rule of law crisis. Some scholars consider the different crises as a result of the lack of procedural ‘input’ legitimation due to citizens’ lack of influence, control and participation. Others oppose the lack of ‘output’ legitimation due to mismatches between citizens’ choices and politicians’ delivery. Some others focus on the lack of real political contestation of central EU-level policies and matters of institutional design or uphold the results of European integration creating a legitimacy deficit within Member States who are no longer permitted or able to meet popular demands. There is also the view that the EU does not suffer from a legitimacy deficit, democratic or otherwise. The purpose of this seminar is not to give right or wrong to one or more of the above theses but to assess the hypothetical lack of legitimacy by its results, meaning the crises. Thus, the Treaty of Maastricht marked the advent of a new era giving rise to an ongoing ‘polycrisis’. The ‘polycrisis’, term introduced by Jean-Claude Juncker, was ushered by the failed constitutional treaty, the euro-crisis and the fear of Grexit, the refugee crisis, the Brexit and now the topical rule of law crisis.

This research retraces the way through the “polycrisis” reflecting on possible lessons to draw from the discursive history of EU management. The initial and early legitimating discourses of the EU were focusing on the promise of peace and prosperity through European integration. They were however surprisingly silent on the matter of how the public may have felt about the integration project. However, those foundational discourses made substantial claims about what people in post-war Europe supposedly needed and wanted in order to avoid future war and to recover economically. The EU legitimating discourses have profoundly changed though due to growing euro-scepticism and rejection showing signs of a pending crisis of legitimacy.

The most recent example of the ‘polycrisis', namely the rule of law crisis, is partly due to the inertia of the European institutions in implementing the article 7 TEU mechanism. This is despite the variety of actions that could be taken by the EU regarding maintaining high levels of respect for the rule of law within the EU. Hence it seems that the rule of law crisis has come to stay. The escalation in the rule of law crisis creates a dissonance regarding the way the European Union perceives the rule of law, and points to the ambiguity in terms of content and legal nature. This dissonance adds to the existing tension between the claims of an illiberal constitutional identity and the violation of the rule of law. Illiberalism refers to representative democracies which do not necessarily guarantee fundamental rights and/or the rule of law. Some member states such as Hungary and Poland have been classified as being “illiberal” while being members of the European Union. This is on the grounds of their having refused to accept the relocation of refugees as well as for their having undermined the independence of the judicial system. 

Even if such manifestations of illiberalism are increasingly frequent, illiberalism cannot shape the panorama of the European polity. This is because it goes against the prerequisite of abiding by the rule of law which is required to join the EU. The law crisis reached its peak when the introduction of the rule of law conditionality Regulation was believed to be the solution. The rule of law conditionality Regulation was subject to an action for annulment introduced by Hungary and Poland and was dismissed by the ECJ in its long-awaited rulings after the C-156/21 and C-157/21 cases. Even if the ECJ made it clear that the Regulation is not a substitute nor a reinstatement of the article 7 TEU procedure, we can only wait to see how the Regulation will be applied. The rule of law violations were linked directly to the allocation of EU budget, and this raises questions about the challenges at stake.