Black Box Berlaymont: Administrative Coordination within the European Commission and the Nexus between the Rule of Law and the Single Market
In recent years, academic, political and public debates about the EU’s rule of law crisis focused mostly on violations of judicial independence, institutional capture or fundamental rights violations by illiberal parties in government. Much less attention has been given to how their economic policies relate to the rule of law. Since 2025, the European Commission in its annual reporting pays special attention to the effect of rule of law violations on the single market. The research project critically analyzes the implementation of and findings on the single market dimension by opening the “black box” of the European Commission. First, the project conceptually addresses a research gap on the economic drivers and effects of rule of law regression in the EU. Second, by applying an administrative science perspective, it studies how interdepartmental coordination and cooperation processes affect policy output in the field of the rule of law. Third, by doing so, it contributes to a better understanding of the Commission’s working methods, more generally.
