The project is based on the concept of ‘biting intergovernmentalism’. It focuses on the research puzzle why Member States obviously committed to the rule of law refrained from deploying Article 259 TFEU in defence of it, in spite of the legal tool’s obvious merits and applies the toolkit of political science to deliver answers to this question. The project’s geographic focus covers the main “Friends of the Rule of Law” countries and investigates through personal and online explorative semi-structured interviews what arguments of 1) European law, 2) European institutional politics, 3) European party politics, or 4) bilateral diplomatic relations are used to explain and legitimize the refraining from any deployment of biting intergovernmentalism. By analysing and clustering the interview outcomes, in the second phase of the research an online expert survey will be prepared and conducted among a broader circle of legal and EU experts and foreign policy professionals of the aforementioned countries. The online expert survey will provide a deeper understanding of the legal and political considerations regarding the application of Article 259 TFEU, the respective state behaviours of the main “Friends of the Rule of Law” countries, and ultimately of the intergovernmental dimension of the rule of law protection in the EU.
Daniel Hegedüs is Fellow for Central Europe at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. His areas of research include populism, democratic and rule of law backsliding, and European and foreign affairs of the Visegrad countries. He has studied political science, history, and European law at the Eötvös Loránd University Budapest and the Humboldt University in Berlin.
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