Current Challenges for the Application of the Rule of Law in European States, Poznań, 12–13 April, 2018

More recently, a few European states have been alleged to have violated the rule of law, the key element of operation of a democratic state. Respect for the rule of law in European Union Member States has increasingly been of interest for EU institutions, both in relation to the procedure under Art. 7 of the Treaty of the European Union and to the proposal of the European Commission to link the amount of EU budget allocation for a Member State with the evaluation of the State’s respect for the values enshrined in Art. 2 of the Treaty of the European Union, including the rule of law principle. A significant role in both cases is played by the evaluation performed by the European Commission, the executive body in the institutional order of the EU. The unique function of the European Commission, coupled with laconic provisions of EU treaties and the fact that the rule of law was introduced into treaties only in 1999, along with the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty, triggers not only questions concerning the competence of the European Commission to audit the compliance of acts of national law with the rule of law principle, but first of all those concerning the normative content of the above principle, shared by all the EU Member States. The former question was addressed e.g. in the 2017 monograph by T. Konstadinides, The Rule of Law in European Union. The Internal Dimension, (Portland, Oregon, 2017). In the introduction the author observes: “Thus, despite its good will to enforce virtuous practice across the Member States by first extending EU law compliance outside cross-border situation and beyond mere breaches of substantive provisions, the EU has entered uncharted territory. Such a development may in turn expose the EU’s power limits as well as democratic and rule of law flaws, viz the restrictive interpretation for entire system of the judicial review of EU law and externally viz the EU’s international responsibility for wrongful acts with regard to, for instance, the implementation of various ‘anti-crises’ measures” (Ibid.: 4). As to the latter issue, which was the root cause of the organisation of the conference, one may quote A. v. Bogdandy’s statement about difficulties with a definition of the normative content of the rule of law: “Dies ist kein leichtes Unterfangen, bildet doch die Rechtsstaatlichkeit ein nur schwer definierbares Konzept. Zudem verstehen die verschiedenen Verfassungstraditionen unter den englischen, griechischen, italienischen, französischen Entsprechungen rule of law, κράτος δικαίου, stato di diritto, État de droit, um nur einige Beispiele zu nennen, durchaus nicht immer dasselbe.”1 In the face of the above challenges, the Institute for Western Affairs (Instytut Zachodni, hereinafter IZ) decided to host an international conference dedicated to Current Challenges for the Application of the Rule of Law in European States. Conference participants included