Although the European Union’s (EU) response to the Rule of law (RoL) crisis continues to garner considerable attention, few studies have assessed the Union’s interactions with other international bodies monitoring and enforcing the values of the RoL and democracy. Accordingly, this paper examines the European Commission’s recurrent appeal to the Venice Commission’s (VC) opinions in RoL-related documents. The Commission’s use of the VC’s expertise is puzzling for several reasons: first, it possesses the mandate to monitor EU member states, thus rendering the VC’s involvement redundant. Second, the EU Commission has revealed a tendency to avert losses of competencies, instead choosing to delegate authority to centralised EU-level bodies when necessary. Lastly, the EU has displayed previous reluctance to accept the jurisdiction of CoE bodies. Against this backdrop, this paper sheds light on the factors explaining the Commission’s use of external expertise and locates it among the Commission’s practices to address the RoL crisis. We argue that two explanations account for the Commission’s resort to the VC’s insights: firstly, it compensates for incomplete monitoring capabilities and limited access to information while minimising institutional costs. Secondly, amid contested assertions of its legitimacy over the RoL, the EU Commission enhances its legitimacy by showcasing adherence to expertise-based problem-solving and impartiality. Empirically, we test the argument through a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with EU Commission officials involved in developing RoL-related documents and representatives at the VC.

Democratic backsliding within individual member states represent a long-standing and systemic issue for the EU. This article provides a novel insight into associated EU policy action by investigating what kinds of expertise is relevant – and why – for policymakers when they evaluate normative concepts such as the ‘rule of law’ and ‘democracy’ against EU standards and member state governance practices. The article utilises a mixed-methods approach with the use of surveys and semi-structured interviews with EP policymakers as well as document analysis to assess individual perceptions about the relative importance of expertise sources within related EP activities. The article specifically focuses on perceptions about the expertise used regarding the own-initiative EP resolution which started the Article 7 process against Hungary in 2018. The findings demonstrate that expertise from NGOs, party groups, international organisations and committee secretariats were the most important for policymakers. Against this background, policymaker approaches to the GAL-TAN divide, intra-/inter-group politics and levels of inter-personal trust were key determinants in shaping how expertise sources are perceived and used in EP rule of law processes. The findings also illuminate how the mandate of institutional neutrality simultaneously elevates and imposes limits on the relative importance of EP administrative expertise within policymaking.

The European Union (EU) enlargement policy has been considered the most effective tool of the EU as an “EU external governance” in exporting democracy, the rule of law, fundamental freedoms and other values on which the EU is founded in third countries. Considering the lessons learned from previous accession cases– especially Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia, the EU approach shifted toward a bold strategy compared with the previous one. Accordingly, the 2011 Enlargement Strategy emphasized the importance of issues related to the judiciary and fundamental rights and to justice and home affairs and stipulated that “These should be tackled early in the accession process and the corresponding chapters opened accordingly on the basis of action plans, as they require the establishment of convincing track records” (p. 5). Following the Commission approach, on 21 - 22 June 2016, the Albanian parliament, with the “blessing” of the EU and USA, approved the constitutional changes by revamping the “Europeanization” of the judiciary system. Basically, the judiciary reform package aims to make the country’s judiciary independent, capable of fighting corruption and ending impunity for politicians.

This paper analyses the role of the EU as a promoter of judiciary reform in candidate countries, focusing on the Albanian jurisdiction. The paper argues that a dilemma exists between legal compliance with EU standards and the implementation of reforms. While the EU, through judiciary reform, aims to transform the Albanian judiciary system in compliance with the Justice and Home Affairs acquis, political polarisation in Albania has hampered institutional set-up, effectiveness, independence, and the fight against corruption. By adopting a dogmatic legal methodology, the paper provides a detailed theoretical discussion of the EU’s external dimension as a (legal) normative power and analyses the impact of the European integration process of the Albanian judiciary system. Moreover, the paper assesses the impact of judiciary reform and discusses the extent to which judiciary reform in Albania is considered successful.