The future of the Rule of Law in the EU

Speaker: Laurent Pech, Full Professor of Law, Dean of Law and Head of the UCD Sutherland School of Law

This lecture will first provide an overview of the EU’s rule of law toolbox and its development over the years. Three trends will be drawn from this overview: (i) an infatuation with toolbox redesign; (ii) the adoption of narrow and, at times, contra legem interpretations; and (iii) an increasing, yet concealed, politicisation of the toolbox coupled with Panglossian assessments. It will be submitted that these trends are bound to exacerbate as they are being reinforced by two further recent trends: (iv) increasing disregard for the rule of law at both Member State and EU levels, and (v) increasing lawlessness on the international plane in a broader context of rising authoritarianism and steep backsliding in consolidated democracies such as the USA. The end result will be a new phase in the history of the rule of law in the EU, where disguised politicisation and reality-disconnected assessments – coupled with illegal (in)action and underenforcement – are likely to become dominant features.

Laurent Pech is Full Professor of Law at UCD Sutherland School of Law. He is also a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Bordeaux and the University of Paris-Panthéon-Assas; a Senior Visiting Researcher and academic co-director of the Rule of Law Clinic at the CEU Democracy Institute in Budapest; and the co-director of The Good Lobby Profs which he co-founded in 2021.