THE EUROPEAN UNION’S POLICIES TO PROTECT THE RULE OF LAW IN THE CASE OF DEMOCRATIC BACKSLIDING IN HUNGARY

Abstract

Hungary is one of the European Union (EU) members challenging the EU from within. The recent legal and constitutional changes under Viktor Orban’s governments question the EU’s capacity and political will to prevent the violations by its members of its rules, norms and values pertaining to democracy. In conjunction with the definition of the current democratic decline in the country as “illiberal” democracy, “defective” democracy or “elected autocracy”, this study addresses the process as democratic backsliding. This study aims to analyse how the EU manages democratic backsliding in Hungary. For this purpose, the research is based on the content analysis of official EU documents and publications, democracy indexes of various international institutions as well as secondary literature. Considering the EU’s approach to democratic decline in Hungary as a rule of law crisis, the study explores the EU’s institutional mechanisms and policy tools to protect the rule of law in its member states. This study aims to make a contemporary contribution to the literature by discussing the EU’s political will and mechanisms to protect the rule of law in the case of Hungary’s democratic backsliding.