The European Union in 2024 is not the same institution that Britain voted to leave in 2016. Anti-EU populism has tightened its grip on the continent. And crises like the invasion of Ukraine and the fallout from Covid-19 have left the bloc and its members in a politically volatile place. Now, Ursula Von der Leyen is in a quagmire: how does she accommodate this rightward shift while maintaining the support of the liberal centre?
Giorgia Meloni – leader of Brothers of Italy and president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party – became prime minister in Italy in 2022; in the recent Austrian elections Herbert Kickl’s hard-right Freedom Party finished first; and plenty more hard-right figures govern in coalitions across the bloc, with record representation in the European Parliament.
Now, the centre is increasingly reliant on the consent of the fringes to govern. Von der Leyen needs these groups to maintain her grip on power and to push through her agenda – leading to allegations from centrist allies that the Commission is “subservient” to the whims of the right; and impotently refusing to punish member states who deviate from the club’s rules.
Take, for example, 2020 reports that judicial independence was in jeopardy in Hungary; and that Poland was restricting press freedoms. When the EU asked them to fall in line with the bloc’s standards on the rule of law, the pair threatened to kibosh the entire budget and emergency Covid fund.
The machinery of Brussels have tools at their disposal to punish delinquent members: they can withhold central funding or suspend voting rights. But in this staring contest with Hungary and Poland, the EU blinked. Critics say that even in the face of borderline authoritarianism, the EU’s top brass play grubby politics – accommodating these rule of law violations – instead of upholding the bloc’s standards. Instances like these have seen the Europhile liberal centre turn on their own.
In typical Brussels fashion, the proposed solution to this rule of law quandary was to write an annual report. First published in 2020, the Rule of Law Report intended to take stock of how closely each member state complies with EU standards on citizen rights. A few years in and this process has remained an unsatisfactory salve to the critics (plenty of whom think the EU should threaten sanctions on those who fail to adhere to these established norms).
A backlash has been fomenting for some time but it is as loud as ever now. In fact, on Monday, Liberties, a network of civil liberties groups, called the latest report “completely ineffective as an enforcement tool,”. Daniel Freund, a Green MEP said that if the Commission does nothing off the back of the report then it is “basically just a chronicle of the democratic backsliding that’s already happened.” He added: “The Commission has done too little in the past. And the makeup of the parliament now means that action against conservative governments is very unlikely in the future.”
Brits who have taken their eyes off Brussels may be surprised to witness the centre turn on an institution run by Ursula von Der Leyen. The Commission President has been painted by the British press as a woke centrist who embodies the type of arrogant overlord that dominates the Europhile Brussels establishment. In other words, she is supposed to be their darling.
But the view from Brussels is rather different. “Under her, the Commission has continued its drift to working directly with the heads of government almost bilaterally, rather than acting as a multinational executive in the interests of the EU,” says Sophie in ’t Veld, a former MEP and architect of the Rule of Law Report. “No one should be surprised that she is reluctant to take action against the very people to whom she’s completely subservient.”
With no action, this might only get worse for Von der Leyen. “Rule of law in the EU has deteriorated significantly over the last decade. Governments have failed to live up to ideals of values enshrined in Treaties,” says Jakub Jaraczewski from Democracy Reporting International. The Commission now has more tools to deal with such developments. But it remains to see if it will have the desire to use them.”
That’s the polite way saying that if Von der Leyen allows her second term as president to carry on this way, she risks alienating the EU’s most passionate supporters, who might wonder why those who treat the bloc’s rules with contempt are being hugged closer to the heart of European power.
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