Conference on Rule of law, liberal democracy & economic governance in the EU
The crises that have confronted the European Union (EU) over the past decade have reshaped its modes of governance and policies (Fabbrini 2015; Schmidt 2022) as well as the preferences of political, social, and legal actors at both the national and the supranational levels. Not only the responses to the Eurozone, migration or the rule of law crises, but also the methods by which decisions are taken, have been contested. Amid the Eurozone crisis, the consensus over the values on which the EU is founded – the respect for human rights and human dignity, personal freedoms, democracy, equality, the rule of law, minority rights as enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) – has eroded. Pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, solidarity, and equality have been under strain. As Ferrara and Kriesi (2022) argue, while EU integration has advanced at an unprecedented rate (Ladi and Wolff 2020), this evolution has often been associated with a heightened degree of political fragmentation inside the EU.
Against this backdrop, liberal democracy has found itself at the centre of increased contestation. Both the practice and the ideal of liberal democracy have faced significant challenges from actors across the ideological spectrum. Liberal democracy has become a polarizing issue and a matter of political competition and dissensus. While some actors aim to preserve or reconfigure liberal democracy, others seek to replace it with non-democratic political regimes. Some of the actors target the democratic tradition and the forms of expression of the popular will, others the liberal tradition, meaning rights, the rule of law and the separation of powers (Coman and Brack, forthcoming).
In response to the rule of law crisis in Hungary and in Poland and to safeguard the EU’s common values within its borders, hard and soft instruments have been established. New forms of conditionality emerged, allowing the suspension of EU funds when breaches to the rule of law affecting the EU budget are observed (Regulation 2020/2092) or when the Charter of Fundamental Rights is not respected (Regulation 2021/1060 laying down common provisions for EU funding programs). The conditionality regime born from different crises has resulted in a complex legal regulatory device (Vita 2020; Fasone and Simoncini 2023; Dermine 2024) where conditions are interdependent, and each type of conditionality reinforces the others (Coman and Puleo 2024) and brings together the rule of law, liberal democracy and economic governance.
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When: March 17th, 14:00 – 17:30
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About RED-SPINEL
RED-SPINEL analyses the changing nature of dissensus surrounding liberal democracy and its implications for EU supranational policy instruments.
It is a 36-month long, 3.2 million euro, interdisciplinary, international and intersectoral Horizon Europe project involving seven higher education institutions: Université libre de Bruxelles, Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, HEC Paris, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu and the University of Warwick. They are joined in the consortium by four non-academic partners: Peace Action, Training and Research Institute in Romania, Milieu Consulting, Magyar Helsinki Bizottság / Hungarian Helsinki Committee and Stichting Nederlands Instituut voor Internationale Betrekkingen Clingendael across eight European countries.