Autocratic Legalism in the EU: (Bad) Lessons From Hungary, Poland and Italy

 The Union’s vulnerability in the domain of values, including, but not confined to the rule of law, which is more and more coming to light in Hungary and Poland, is caused by a far-reaching systemic problem of the European Union’s design and also by the modalities of its day-to-day functioning, both falling short of upholding the much-restated rule of law ideal for the Union. Although numerous scholarly propositions have been made as to how to deal with the rule of law deficiencies in the EU to circumvent the perceived difficulties of Article 7 deployment (these are normally formulated in general terms, but, usually for good reasons, have specific member state(s) in mind), the depth of the problem seems to be defying easy solutions, implying the need to move beyond enforcement-dominated thinking in our analysis.