The European Parliament as a Rule of Law Promoter in the European Union Member State and Neighborhood Contexts

Abstract

The rule of law is considered one of the foundational values underpinning the functioning of the European Union (EU). It needs to be followed by the EU’s member states while also actively promoted externally. The EU institutions themselves are also bound to act in accordance with it. The EU treaties also state that the Union is founded on “representative democracy,” which should afford the European Parliament (EP), as the EU’s only directly-elected institution, a central role in EU-level policymaking. The empowerment of the EP has been a relatively recent phenomenon, and most studies on the rule of law promotion focus on the EU’s other legislating bodies. In this thesis, I concentrate on the EP as a rule of law promoter in the member state and neighborhood contexts. I identify a disconnect between the promotion of Article 2 TEU values and the EU institutions’ own adherence to them, largely due to the opaque and unaccountable co-decision or Ordinary Legislative Procedure. While leading to high output legitimacy due to increased legislative efficiency, this procedure is decreasing the EU’s input legitimacy, which in turn threatens the legitimacy of its overall rule of law promotion efforts. This thesis uses two case studies of regulations passed under the OLP to investigate the toolkit which the EP uses to increase the input legitimacy of the legislative procedures and their implementation. The first is internally focused and is the recent Regulation on a General Regime of Conditionality for the Protection of the Union Budget. The second is externally focused and is the Neighbourhood Policy Instrument. I use a textual analysis of key documents pertaining to these regulations, as well as insights from interviews conducted with EU academics and professionals with exposure to the legislative processes of the Union, to gain a better understanding of the EP’s role in these deliberations. I find that in addition to playing an active part in shaping the final versions of the two regulations, the EP balances the secretive nature of negotiations under OLP with highly publicized resolutions and plenary debates seeking to illuminate its position and goals in negotiations. This toolkit attempts to balance the output legitimacy of OLP with greater input legitimacy. Ultimately, this leads to a wider policy discussion along two lines: the role that the EP should play in the EU legislative process in future, and the extent to which rule of law promotion should be politicized. I conclude that due to its role in increasing the transparency of the EU’s lawmaking in the field of the rule of law, there is room for the EP to play an even greater part in the institutional structure of the EU. Further, politicizing the rule of law fight may be a necessary step in increasing the input legitimacy of the EU.