Constitutional Democracy, Authoritarian Populism and the EU ‘Rule of Law Conditionality’. It’s the Budget (but Also Time to Reform the EU), Stupid!

Abstract The EU is facing a dilemma. Any outside interference of the EU to protect constitutional democracy in Member states might strengthen populist movements that are challenging constitutional democracy itself in those Member states. Not surprisingly the principle of the rule of law in Member states is protected in the EU through mechanisms which are essentially political. However, the non-use of those political mechanisms has contributed to the failure of the European Union to protect constitutional democracy in those Member states. Therefore, the dilemma is whether the EU should use only mechanisms of political control (such as those under Article 7 TEU) or also mechanisms of legality control (such as infringement proceedings or the ‘rule of law conditionality’) to face such constitutional challenges. The hypothesis which will be demonstrated here is that constitutional democracy in the EU Member states should be protected (also) via legality control, notwithstanding the risk of strengthening populism there. In particular, the positive outcomes achieved by using the ‘rule of law conditionality mechanism’, when it comes to Poland in April 2024, will be underlined; as well as the partial failure in December 2023 of some of the related mechanisms, when it comes to Hungary. It will be also demonstrated that this failure was due to the veto that Hungary is able to play within the EU decision-making procedures. Therefore, this demonstrates that it is time to strengthen the governance of the European Union itself, so as to avoid veto played by authoritarian populists within the EU.