András Jakab - Böcker

It is clear that the current crisis of the EU is not confined to the Eurozone and the EMU, evidenced in its inability to ensure the compliance of Member States to follow the principles and values underlying the integration project in Europe (including the protection of democracy, the Rule of Law, and human rights). This defiance has affected the Union profoundly, and in a multi-faceted assessment of this phenomenon, The Enforcement of EU Law and Values: Ensuring Member States' Compliance, dissects the essence of this crisis, examining its history and offering coping methods for the years to come. Defiance is not a new concept and this volume explores the richness of EU-level and national-level examples of historical defiance – the French Empty Chair policy–, the Luxembourg compromise, and the FPÖ crisis in Austria - and draws on the experience of the US legal system and that of the integration projects on other continents. Building on this legal-political context, the book focuses on the assessment of the adequacy of the enforcement mechanisms whilst learning from EU integration history. Structured in four parts, the volume studies (1) theoretical issues on defiance in the context of multi-layered legal orders, (2) EU mechanisms of acquis and values' enforcement, (3) comparative perspective on law-enforcement in multi-layered legal systems, and (4) case-studies of defiance in the EU.

In the last decade, at least two European Union (EU) member states have deteriorated from fragile liberal democracies to illiberal regimes. This deterioration not only includes key elements of the rule of law, but also mechanisms of democratic accountability have eroded. While the cause is an unfortunate combination of factors, post-socialist EU member states are particularly likely to embrace an illiberal cause. Saving the European Union from its Illiberal Member States aims to show that inherited cultural patterns from socialism - and even earlier - in the form of informal practices and narratives are a largely underestimated source of illiberalism. Initially, the book diagnoses an unfortunate dynamic of 'mutual poisoning': existing vulnerabilities and weaknesses of democracy and the rule of law at the level of EU law are exacerbated by illiberal member states, and vice versa. The crisis of illiberal regimes is shown to be a symptom of the EU's own constitutional malaise. Authors András Jakab and Lando Kirchmair aim to offer antidotes to this mutual affliction, highlighting areas of EU law that have been neglected. Chapters examine whether an epistemological tool, such as the EU Justice Scoreboard, could be adapted to identify illiberal elements. The authors also argue that the protection of fundamental rights needs to be strengthened, through the completion of the European Fundamental Rights Union. Finally, the book states that the Spitzenkandidaten-system needs to be further strengthened and stabilised for the long term - not only to ensure the democratic accountability of the Commission, but also because this has the potential to bring the Commission's hitherto undecided and hesitant stance closer to that of the European Parliament.