Career trajectories of contemporary professionals often include movements between two different organizational spheres: public and private. This phenomenon is known as “revolving doors”. Such doors swing at an increasing speed. In Slovenia, for example, more than 20% of former MPs and public office holders move to the corporate world. In the EU, the proportion of “revolvers” among MEPs and staff are even higher. Additionally, many people go back and forth multiple times creating circular movements.

The EU has recently drawn attention to revolving doors as a rule of law issue. In its annual rule of law monitoring, the Commission has repeatedly renewed a call for the need to regulate revolving doors in Member States. In this paper, we contribute to the rule of law and revolving doors literatures by asking the so far neglected question: Is the revolving door mobility a rule of law issue? Do revolving doors have consequences (and if so, what) for the rule of law? Acknowledging the potential of revolving doors to create “regulatory capture” and lead to a loss of legitimacy and integrity of policy-making institutions, we, however, focus on the other side of the coin: mobility enables a circulation of bureaucratic capital and expertise. This subsequently enables a corporate-political dialogue, efficient rule-setting in the public sector, and improved compliance in the private sector. We suggest that revolving doors may thus function as a “school of democracy” for the private sector and as a “school of corporate thinking” for the public sector. In our paper, we use preliminary findings from the research we have conducted in Finland and Slovenia.

Democracy is one of the founding values of the European Union (EU) and a guiding principle in its external relations. In the course of the Eastern enlargement, the Union emerged as one of the major democracy promoters. However, the assaults on democratic institutions in some EU member states have undermined the assumption about the positive impact of EU membership on democratic consolidation and sparked a lively discussion whether the Union can safeguard democracy. The EU’s responses to democratic backsliding have attracted a lot of scholarly attention, however, research remains largely confined to the study of sanctions. With the aim to reorient the debate, the article proposes a novel framework to study the EU’s impact after accession and analyses the influence of the Union on democratic reforms in Bulgaria and Romania. Both countries are fascinating cases to explore. Upon accession in 2007 they became the only member states subject to post-accession monitoring through the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM). Conceived as a short-term instrument to address several ‘outstanding issues’ in the areas of judicial reform and the fight against corruption, the mechanism is yet to be revoked. Despite the limited sanctioning power of the CVM, the trajectories of Bulgaria and Romania have diverged. Thus, challenging the perceived wisdom that EU interventions only matter before accession. The article advances the argument that identifying and exploring the key mechanisms through which EU membership can empower and constrain domestic actors is critical to understanding the differentiated impact of EU democracy promotion and safeguarding.

This paper explores the way in which the rule of law and democracy manifest in populist discourses across the EU. Placing emphasis on the incendiary rhetoric employed by populist actors in Hungary, Poland, and elsewhere, it shows how those actors adopt specific perceptions of European values. Distinguishing rhetorical ploys from actual political beliefs, this paper attempts to (i) contrast the different conceptions of European values proposed by the EU and by populist actors, and (ii) pinpoint the fundamental analytical flaws in the claims made by such actors.