This book analyses the challenges facing the European Union through the frame of the rule of law. It shows how over the last decades the increased dissensus and contestation of the rule of law has given rise to heightened tensions between national and EU institutions, leading to the establishment of new soft and hard policy tools to safeguard it at the supranational level. The book proposes a comprehensive and multifaceted analysis of the current state of debates by exploring how EU institutional actors seek to uphold the Unions values. It shows that European integration in core state powers is the outcome of the clash between liberal and anti-liberal ideas, between dissensus and contestation over how collective problems should be solved, in a community of voices featuring assent and dissent, all of which give democracy its substance. Beyond the analysis of the emerging EUs rule of law policy, the book will help readers to better understand the EUs fragilities and resilience and the potential challenges for the future of EU integration.
1. The Gradual Establishment of an EU Rule of Law Policy in Times of
Dissensus.-
2. The Core Dimensions of the Rule of Law: From Consensus to
Dissensus.-
3. From the Constitutionalisation of Values to the Question of
Enforcement.-
4. The Commissions Rule of Law Soft Tools: Towards the
Establishment of a Monitoring Regime?.-
5. The European Parliament: How
Coalition Formation and Internal Group Dynamics Shape EUs Rule of Law
Policy?.-
6. The Rule of Law Debate in the Council: Weak Consensus and
Impossible Deliberation and Persuasion in Times of Dissensus and
Contestation.-
7. The European Councils Role in Day-to-Day DecisionMaking:
Increasing the EUs Authority Through a General Regime of Conditionality
(Regulation 2020/2092)?.-
8. When Civil Society Engages with the EUs Rule of
Law Policy-Making: Towards a More Substantive Understanding?.-
9. Ten Years
on, What Then Is the Outcome? Consensus, Dissensus and Contestation over the
Rule of Law.
Ramona Coman is Professor of Political Science at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, where she is also President of the Institute for European Studies. She is the co-editor of books including Governance and Politics in the Post-Crisis European Union (2019), Political Science in Motion (2016), The State of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Perspective (2016), and Europeanization and European Integration: From Incremental to Structural Change (2014).
