ENROL Enforcing the rule of law: What can the European Union do to prevent rule of law deterioration from within?

• Shannon, Samuel (2026). A Meta-Remedy in EU Judicial Federalism. Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law Research Paper Series. ISSN 2309-0227. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.6633498. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Since the 1960s, the European Court of Justice (‘ECJ’) has used the preliminary reference procedure to develop a unique system of judicial federalism, in which private parties enforce their EU rights not before the ‘federal’ ECJ but through Member State courts. For this system to provide effective judicial protection, national courts must be independent and impartial—features that have been threatened by recent judicial backsliding in Member States such as Poland. But the ECJ has not been idle in response to this backsliding. It has continued to use preliminary references to develop this system by ruling that Article 19(1) TEU provides an actionable right to an independent and impartial court, that national courts can ‘set aside’ judicial appointments which violate this crucial Treaty provision, and that they can do so even in respect of appointments positioned higher in the national judicial hierarchy. This article makes two contributions. First, it conceptualizes how the ECJ’s recent rulings have created a meta-remedy, that is, a tool to vindicate Article 19(1) TEU rights and thereby secure the viability of all ordinary remedies, such as Member State liability. Secondly, the article provides an account of how this meta-remedy fares in the real world. Poland’s judicial ‘reforms’ showcase the structural limitations of the Union’s judicial federalism which, when abused by a Member State, diminish the usefulness of this remedy. However, the article also brings to the fore little-known examples of private parties successfully using the meta-remedy to obtain relief at various levels of Poland’s judiciary, suggesting that national courts can retain an appreciable remedial capacity even when their independence is undermined by national governments.

• Scherz, Antoinette (2025). How should the EU respond to democratic backsliding? A normative assessment of expulsion and suspension of voting rights from the perspective of multilateral democracy. Journal of European Public Policy. ISSN 1350-1763. doi: 10.1080/13501763.2024.2444326. Full text in Research Archive

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• Manriquez, Mauricio Mandujano (2026). Finding Law: Organized Interests and the Confinement of Executive Primacy - Conference Presentation. Full text in Research Archive
• Shannon, Samuel (2025). Private Actions as a Meta-Remedy in EU National Courts. Full text in Research Archive
• Shannon, Samuel (2025). A Balancing Act: Suspending Mutual Trust Without Upending the Union. Full text in Research Archive
• Manriquez, Mauricio Mandujano (2025). The Apex Court’s Dilemma: Rulemaking Alignment Under Hierarchical and Political Constraints - Conference Presentation. doi: https:/mauriciomm7.github.io/assets/files/2025apsa_slides.pdf. Full text in Research Archive
• Makszimov, Vlagyiszlav; Naurin, Daniel & Stiansen, Øyvind (2025). The Impact of EU Enforcement Actions on Domestic Media Debates on Judicial Independence in Hungary. Full text in Research Archive
• Steigler, Alida Rita (2025). The Rule of Law of the European Union: An Inquiry into the Coherence and Consistency of its Definition and Defence. doi: https:/events.berg-hansen.no/Program/Display/Index/14775?projectId=68695#%2Fprogram. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Under the overarching framework of evaluating the European Union's (EU) approach to the rule of law, my project seeks to address the following key questions: How do various EU institutions define and apply the RoL? Is there a sufficiently clear and common understanding of what constitutes the EU's RoL? Is it defended (through promotion and enforcement) in a coherent and consistent manner? Can we expect (normatively and legally) coherence and consistency in the EU’s protection and enforcement of the Rule of Law (RoL) across member states and candidate countries? What do coherence and consistency mean in this context, and how can they be measured? What is the minimum acceptable level of coherence and consistency in the EU’s interpretation and enforcement of the rule of law? The goal of my project is to comprehensively examine these questions to gain an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of the EU's rule of law defense across various relationships.

• Naurin, Daniel (2025). Identifying the Precedential Value of Case Law of the Court of Justice of the EU – A Machine Learning Approach. Full text in Research Archive
• Naurin, Daniel (2025). Institutional perspectives on rule of law enforcement in the EU. Full text in Research Archive
• Steigler, Alida Rita (2025). The Rule of Law of the European Union: An Inquiry Into the Coherence and Consistency of its Definition and Defence. doi: https:/www.plus.ac.at/news/sceus-young-scholar-workshop-on-eu-studies-2025/?lang=en. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The principles of coherence and consistency is integral to the European Union's governance framework, imposing explicit obligations on EU institutions to pursue alignment in both intraand inter-institutional contexts since the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty. This piece examines what these principles entail and their critical role in the protection and promotion of the EU's foundational values as articulated in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, particularly the rule of law.

• Hillion, Christophe (2025). Making a success of EU enlargement: three proposals. doi: https:/sieps.se/media/552hh44r/sieps_2025_2op.pdf. Full text in Research Archive
• Steigler, Alida Rita (2025). Coherence and Consistency in the EU’s Rule of Law Definition and Defence. doi: https:/phil.elte.hu/content/enrol-elte-workshop-2025-interdisciplinary-perspectives-on-democratic-backsliding-in-the-eu.t.46723. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The principles of coherence and consistency is integral to the European Union's governance framework, imposing explicit obligations on EU institutions to pursue alignment in both intra and inter-institutional contexts since the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty. This piece examines what these principles entail and their critical role in the protection and promotion of the EU's foundational values as articulated in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, particularly the rule of law.

• Naurin, Daniel (2025). Identifying the Precedential Value of Case Law of the Court of Justice of the EU – A Machine Learning Approach. Full text in Research Archive
• Hillion, Christophe; Pavone, Tommaso & Scherz, Antoinette (2025). Poland Shows that Restoring Democracy Takes More than an Election. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In the European Union (EU), glimmers of democratic renewal have pierced a somber decade of democratic erosion. Since the illiberal Law and Justice (PiS) government in Poland was voted out of office in October 2023, scholars and policymakers have been grappling with how to restore liberal democracy and what role the EU should play. After PiS came to power in 2015, it made systemic and often unconstitutional changes to Poland’s political edifice by undermining judicial independence, coopting the media, and dismantling the rule of law. The pro-democracy Civic Coalition’s electoral victory in October 2023 was therefore celebrated as a rare exemplar of democratic restoration in a context where liberal democracy remains threatened in Europe and around the world. But undoing the damage of years of seeping autocratization and “democratic backsliding” is proving to be much harder than simply winning an election. In a new paper, we illuminate the promises and perils of what we call democratic “frontsliding”—the piecemeal restoration of liberal democratic institutions and practices after a period of democratic backsliding. Unlike other pathways to democratization that build democracy from scratch—sweeping revolutions, for example, that trigger the sudden collapse of an autocratic state—democratic frontsliding proceeds incrementally as a patchworked process that begins (but hardly ends) with electoral change.

• Shannon, Samuel (2025). Private Actions as a Meta-Remedy in EU National Courts. Full text in Research Archive
• Lindholm, Johan; Naurin, Daniel & Schroeder, Philipp (2025). Negative References to Amicus Briefs in Judicial Reasoning. Journal of Law and Courts. ISSN 2164-6570. 14, p. 616–641. doi: 10.1017/jlc.2025.4. Full text in Research Archive
• Manriquez, Mauricio Mandujano (2026). Finding Law: Organized Interests and the Confinement of Executive Primacy. APSA Preprints. doi: 10.33774/apsa-2026-zcqv9. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Filing written observations before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is a key channel through which private actors, national governments, and the European Commission shape legal rules. While the Commission’s legal service has historically asserted interpretive primacy as “guardian of the Treaties,” recent scholarship highlights the influence of member states and private litigants. This article asks: under what conditions do private actors and governments displace the Commission as the main source of court rulemaking? Using newly available full-text observations from 2022–2025, I measure whose proposals—Commission, member states, or private parties—most closely match the Court’s operative part. Results indicate that the Commission’s presumed interpretive dominance no longer holds. Member states are nearly as likely as the Commission to propose rules closest to the Court’s reasoning, while private actors’ proposals are closest in over one-third of cases, though individual rights claimants are less successful.

• Manriquez, Mauricio Mandujano (2025). The Apex Court’s Dilemma: Rulemaking Alignment Under Hierarchical and Political Constraints. APSA Preprints. doi: 10.33774/apsa-2025-d4nld. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Under what conditions do apex courts align with lower courts in constructing legal rules? Many theories have modeled how judicial hierarchies influence apex court rulemaking and how these courts adapt to external political pressures. However, prioritization between these competing demands remains unclear. This article examines this tension by investigating how the European Court of Justice's operating conditions influence its alignment with domestic court referrals through legal bases adoption. Using a dataset of over 5,000 referral applications (2008-2023), I employ a causal identification to disentangle effects of hierarchical disengagement, political constraints, and legal information. Contrary to prevailing theory, the chief mechanism by which member states induce misalignment is not credible override threats but provision of alternative legal options. While domestic high court disengagement pressures consistently exert positive effects, they are outweighed by opposing misalignment effects of alternatives. These findings suggest apex court responsiveness to judicial hierarchies is constrained by institutional design.

• Hillion, Christophe; Pavone, Tommaso & Scherz, Antoinette (2025). Democratic Frontsliding in the European Union: The Problem of Autocratic Enclaves and the Case for Restorative Disobedience. APSA Preprints. doi: 10.33774/apsa-2025-d7m1b-v2. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  After countless warnings of a democratic recession, there are glimmers of democratic renewal, especially in the European Union. As an illiberal government in Poland was voted out of office, policymakers began debating how to restore liberal democracy and what role the EU should play. We answer by theorizing “democratic frontsliding” –the piecemeal restoration of liberal democratic institutions and practices after a period of democratic erosion– and explain how obstructions to frontsliding can be overcome, leveraging Poland as an exemplary case study. Frontsliding confronts the problem of “autocratic enclaves:” illiberal elites who survive a democratizing election and wield their institutional powers to obstruct democratization. To dismantle autocratic enclaves, we argue that a government may need transgressive acts of defiance and conscientious rule-breaking, which we call “restorative disobedience.” We develop normative criteria for restorative disobedience to prevent its abuse and explain how the EU can mandate, incentivize, and support restorative disobedience.

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