Hungary’s latest experiences with Article 2 TEU : the need for ‘informed’ EU sanctions

Abstract

This contribution will concentrate on the Hungarian situation by analysing the generalised practice of targeted legislation and the different causes for legal uncertainty on the constitutional level. The European Parliament initiated an Article 7 TEU sanctioning procedure against Hungary in September 2018 and several infringement proceedings have been launched by the Commission. Unfortunately, these EU responses were not able to grasp the gist of the Hungarian developments. Even the so called Sargentini report of the European Parliament—intended to be a comprehensive analysis of the rule of law deficiencies in Hungary—could not identify the most significant patterns of the Hungarian rule of law decline. This reveals a central shortcoming of EU sanctioning mechanisms employed against ‘backsliding’ Member States: the need for ‘informed’ sanctions. Some recent legislative proposals for measuring the rule of law illustrate, that the need for such informed sanctions has been realised by EU institutions. However, the question of ‘how’ is still unanswered. Taking the case of Hungary as an example, I will finally recommend some aspects to be considered in order to grasp the patterns of ‘systemic’ rule of law decline.