2004 saw 10 new member countries admitted to the European Union. Just 2 countries were judged not sufficiently ready – Bulgaria and Romania – on grounds of their levels of corruption and judicial incapacity. They were both eventually admitted to the EU on 1st January 2007 – but, uniquely, subjected to an annual inspection through a new procedure called the Cooperation and Verification mechanism (CVM).
Coincidentally, these are the 2 countries in which I have lived since 2007 – indeed I had no sooner returned to Romania from an 8 year stint in Central Asia than I took up a position as Team Leader in Sofia in a project for training regional and local officials to ensure the country’s compliance with EU legislation.
Schengen
and the Euro give Bulgaria and Romania additional reasons for feeling the smack
of second-class citizenship – particularly because after more than a decade
they have not managed to satisfy the taskmasters in Brussels on judicial reform.
The requirement for annual reports on judicial aspects and corruption continued
until 2019 when it was replaced
by the Rule of Law Mechanism (RLM) which necessitates an annual report to
be submitted to the Commission by each and every member country.
Bulgaria and Romania had by then become the least of the EU’s concerns - Hungary and Poland had quickly instituted significant departures from the rule of law – packing courts with political appointees, severely limiting media freedom and making political use of European Funds. And some older member countries such as France and Spain were considered to have questionable aspects to their judicial and constitutional systems
Much
of this had passed me by – what caught my attention at the weekend was the
release of a critical report commissioned
by an Irish MEP Clare Daley on the 2021
assessment by the European Commission - which engages in a dialogue with
member countries about their submissions.
Her report – called Binding the Guardians – is just over 100 pages long and was written by a well-known political economist Albena Azmanova who basically analyses how well the European Commission is fulfilling the task of holding member countries to account for their observation of the Rule of Law. It starts, brilliantly, by suggesting four tests for the Commission’s work -
We suggest that, in
order to effectively comply with the rule of law while conducting its annual rule
of law surveys, the Commission needs to
be guided by (at least) four norms:
·
clarity of
communication,
·
thoroughness in
addressing rule of law violations (that is, in the full range and depth of
detail),
·
equal treatment of the
subjects of power, and
·
impartiality in the use
of power (in the sense of not having a narrow partisan-political agenda).
Obscurity is a fertile ground for arbitrariness, omissions tacitly condone what is omitted, favoritism disempowers some, and partisan-political considerations harm the common good.
Azmanova then applies these tests to the Commission commentary and finds the following problems
· A dangerous conflation
of “rule of Law” with aspects of procedural democracy
·
Vague, overly-diplomatic language
·
Restricted focus - The
Commission report delimits its range to four areas: the justice system, the
anti-corruption framework, media freedom, and ‘other institutional checks and
balances’.
· Failing to include the operations of the private sector
At
this stage, I’m conscious that I recently took a vow of brevity and that I am
about to share excerpts from the report which will double the size of this post…..so
having tantalised you with the summary, I’ll continue shortly
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