How Fares Democracy in Europe?

Today’s post remains on eastern europe but widens to embrace such countries as Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine and to cover such subjects as media freedom, rule of law, anticorruption work and judicial integrity. It's been sparked by two downloads

• the EU's annual rule of law report for 2023 which, I was intrigued to see, uses the language 

of ”regime of conditionality” which is a new one for me

• "The struggle for Good Governance in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova" ed M Emerson et al (2018) 

which I haven’t had a chance to read yet

2004 had seen 10 countries admitted to the EU - just 2 countries were judged not sufficiently 

ready – Bulgaria and Romania – on grounds of their levels of corruption and judicial incapacity. 

Both were admitted on 1st January 2007 but 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. Exclusion from Schengen and the Euro gave Bulgaria and Romania 

reason 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 – but a critical report commissioned by an Irish MEP Clare Daley 

on the 2021 assessment by the European Commission which started a dialogue with member 

countries about their submissions. Her report – called Binding the Guardians – 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 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

A skim of the 2023 Report has unearthed a lot of other reports from worthy bodies 

such as the Council of Europe, Transparency International, Judicial bodies and European 

Parliamentary Committees.. Just think of the tens of thousands of people involved  in this work!!

Other Relevant Material
https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2021/11/bulgaria-flies-under-radar.html 
https://edoc.coe.int/en/annual-activity-report/11589-state-of-democracy-human-right-and-the-rule-of-law-2023-annual-report-of-the-secretary-general-of-the-council-of-europe.html 
https://rm.coe.int/report-of-the-high-level-reflection-group-of-the-council-of-europe-/1680a85cf1 2022
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/libe-democracy-rule-of-law-and-fundament/product-details/20190103CDT02662 
https://commission.europa.eu/system/files/2023-06/scoreboard-factsheet--v2.pdf 
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022 
https://verfassungsblog.de/impunity/