Conference Agenda

The primary tool for assessing the quality of the rule of law in the EU – the annual rule of law report prepared by the European Commission – covers four areas and concentrates on Member States. The assessment of the rule of law at the supranational level is left outside any independent regular expert evaluation. On the contrary, any shortcomings in the quality of the rule of law in the EU are abused by populist governments to undermine the legitimacy of the EU rule of law policy. The first report on the EU rule of law was published in October 2024 by the Rule of Law Clinic at CEU Democracy Institute and followed the structure of the original annual rule of law report (https://ruleoflawclinic.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Rule-of-Law-beyond-the-EU-Member-States-CEU-DI-RoLClinic.pdf). The discussion on that report confirmed that further research on the EU rule of law is needed, especially in the light of ongoing democratic backsliding among EU Member States. The roundtable aims to 1) discuss research methods on the quality of the rule of law in EU institutions and agencies and 2) broaden the discussion about the EU rule of law and cover more fields of EU law, where the rule of law issues should be discussed.