Suchergebnisse

During the second half of the 2010s the governments of Poland and Hungary took a sharp turn away from liberal democracy and the rule of law. As they slipped down the international democracy rankings, the European Union initiated its procedures under Article 7 to investigate possible breaches of its fundamental laws and values. However, the two governments sought to distinguish between their conflict with the European Commission over the rule of law on one hand and their commitment to collective security on the other. The central question in this article is whether they managed to do this, and to what extent democratic backsliding poses security challenges for the EU by weakening its actorness in the field of security, defence and foreign policy. A comparative assessment of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic suggests that democratic backsliding does indeed have security implications for the EU, but that this is only one of several factors driving differentiated integration in the Visegrád Four in this field. Developments in the region are part of a wider EU trend of re-nationalization of security policy. Indeed, in the security field, vertical differentiated integration (in the sense of different mixes of supranational and intergovernmental regimes) is a key factor in mitigating the consequences of horizontal differentiation (different Member State policies).(This article is an output of the EUFLEX project, which has been funded by the Research Council of Norway (project number 287131)).
EU defence policy, Visegrad 4, differentiated integration, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, democratic backsliding, geopolitics

This workshop was held as a follow-up to the written reports delivered as part of Work Package 6, on Political leadership, national politics and transboundary crisis management. It was designed to present the results of case studies on each of these three topics to practitioners in the field, both in terms of whether backsliding is the result of transboundary crises and whether it might in itself lead to or constitute a crisis for the EU; and to seek feedback and advice from said practitioners on how best to develop further research on the topic. The workshop reported on the three main tasks of Work Package 6: analysis of backsliding in the EU (both in terms of democracy and the acquis communautaire); analysis of the reasons for backsliding (including the extent to which it constitutes a response to transboundary crisis management in general and the financial crisis in particular); and assessment of the (crisis management) capacity of EU leaders to address the issue of backsliding and explore policy options. The discussion was designed to set the stage for and to inform the final work on dissemination under the TransCrisis programme, as well as the follow-up work that members of the TransCrisis team will do after the conclusion of the project. In order to secure an open, frank and informal exchange of ideas, the workshop was designed as a small gathering of expert practitioners in the field. The discussions were conducted under the Chatham House Rule1, and consequently this report summarises the main points raised in the discussion without attributing them to individual participants – be it the TransCrisis team or the practitioners.