The EU has long been criticized for failing to address democratic decline in its member states. However, Michael Blauberger and Ulrich Sedelmayr To explain, there has been a marked change in approach since 2022. Brussels is now taking decisive action, and there is reason to believe that this policy change will be sustained over time.
The EU’s approach to democratic backsliding in its member states has changed dramatically. After more than a decade of indifference, the EU has started using financial penalties as sanctions for violations of the rule of law, freezing €130 billion in EU funds for Hungary and Poland beyond 2022.
This is a significant amount for the countries involved. Unblocking EU funds was one of the first priorities of the new Polish government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban is also pushing for the lifting of EU sanctions, not through credible domestic reforms, but by threatening to block EU-level decisions such as aid to Ukraine.
Why the EU is taking action
Why did the EU shift from inaction to enforcement? In a recent study, we argue that the policy shift culminated in the adoption of EU sanctions in 2022, but its origins go back much further. We theorize two distinct political processes that mobilized support for EU sanctions even among political actors who were reluctant to act against democratic backsliding: the internationalization of the backsliding crisis and the negative intergovernmental spillovers that the crisis generated.
First, mainstream parties across the EU have come to support sanctions against illiberal governments abroad because of domestic electoral incentives. By supporting EU sanctions, mainstream parties can distance themselves from illiberal parties at home and abroad. This distancing is especially important for mainstream parties that have maintained close relations with degenerative governments in the past but fear electoral punishment if their foreign allies become toxic domestically.
An important prerequisite for this development is that democratic backsliding abroad receives public attention and public condemnation in other EU member states. We find that democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland actually receives increasing public attention and condemnation in EU member states. This internationalization of the backsliding crisis explains the shift in the position of the former party alliance in favor of EU sanctions against backsliding governments abroad (as in the case of the German conservatives distancing themselves from Fidesz in Hungary).
Second, even previously reluctant governments began to support EU sanctions when EU policymaking was disrupted by degenerative governments. At first, they were careful to ensure that the degenerative governments in Hungary and Poland were seen as reliable partners at the EU level. In return, EU decision-makers, especially other governments in the Council, were reluctant to enforce EU values on degenerative governments for fear of jeopardizing intergovernmental cooperation.
However, the Hungarian and Polish governments have increasingly abandoned their self-restraint and increasingly disrupted key EU policies. Hungary’s obstruction of EU sanctions against Russia and EU support for Ukraine have been the most prominent examples of policy disruption.
But what is noteworthy is that it was already in motion long before Russia’s war on Ukraine: undermining the EU’s response to the 2015 refugee crisis, threatening to block the EU’s multiannual budget during the COVID-19 pandemic, challenging the supremacy of EU law, and forming alliances with illiberal leaders abroad. The timing helps explain why the Council adopted the EU budget conditionality rules in December 2000.
Will the EU stick to its current course?
Taken together, these two processes—the internationalization of the deteriorating crisis and the negative intergovernmental spillovers that result from the deteriorating crisis—explain why the EU has shifted from inaction to enforcement. But how sustainable is that policy shift?
Skeptic voices point to worrying signs that the EU has not yet fully escaped the “dictatorship trap”. The Commission’s decision to grant Hungary €10.2 billion in cohesion funds just days before the European Council meeting in December 2023 may have set a “Faustian” precedent, suggesting that Viktor Orbán’s veto-threat strategy of blackmail has worked. Likewise, there were signs that the EU is normalizing rather than avoiding cooperation with illiberal parties ahead of the 2024 European Parliament elections.
But two strands of our argument provide reason for a more cautiously optimistic interpretation. First, so far at least, blocking EU policy decisions has had little effect on declining governments. Instead, it has deepened frustration at the EU level.
The failed strategy of the Commission to bow to Viktor Orbán’s veto threat in December 2023 can only be remembered as a sound warning that the EU cannot succeed in the long term if it becomes vulnerable to blackmail and thereby creates further policy confusion. At the European Council in January 2024, EU leaders appear to have learned exactly that lesson, as they sought alternatives to reduce Hungary’s vulnerability to veto threats and successfully increased pressure on Hungary.
Second, while illiberal parties have significantly increased their support in the 2024 European Parliament elections, their electoral victory does not automatically lead to a weaker European Parliament on democratic backsliding. There are already temporary voting coalitions between mainstream and illiberal parties in the European Parliament, and there is reason to think that they could become more frequent, for example to weaken EU legislation on the “Green Deal”.
However, it is unlikely that this policy cooperation among the parties in the European Parliament will extend to attempts to weaken EU sanctions against regressors. In doing so, the mainstream parties risk alienating their domestic constituencies, who have become aware of regressors abroad and who generally oppose them. The mainstream parties therefore continue to have an incentive to support EU sanctions against regressors in order to show their distance. This incentive may be even greater when faced with a strong and vocal illiberal minority in the European Parliament.
In short, the EU’s future course of action on democratic retreat is not determined by structural conditions. There is considerable agency. If EU leaders have learned the lessons of 15 years of democratic retreat in the EU, they may resist the temptation to compromise the EU’s commitment to liberal democratic values for short-term policy agreements in the Council or the European Parliament.
For further details, please see the authors’ attached paper. European Journal of Public Policy
Note: This article presents the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the position of EUROPP (European Politics and Policy) or the London School of Economics. Source of featured image: Alexander Michailidis / Shutterstock.com
