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Overcoming the diversity-consistency dilemmas in EU Rule of Law external action

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Abstract

The development of a coherent EU Rule of Law external action strategy requires that the Union overcome two “diversity dilemmas” and one “consistency dilemma.” The three dilemmas are interrelated and ought to be approached holistically. The first diversity dilemma pertains to the great divergence in the current uses and understandings of the concept of the Rule of Law. The second emanates from empirical reality, rather than conceptual challenge. In the contemporary global system, the EU faces a broad, possibly widening, set of political regimes which pose distinctly different Rule of Law challenges. A meaningful Rule of Law external action strategy therefore cannot be based on uniformity of conceptualization or policy prescriptions but must contend squarely with a reality of great, and arguably growing, variance. Grappling with diversity while maintaining conceptual and policy coherence represents the third key challenge to the development of a coherent EU Rule of Law external action strategy. Resolving the consistency dilemma necessitates accommodating diversity within a coherent conceptual and policy framework. This, in turn, requires that, in its external action, the EU approach the Rule of Law as a central pillar of a broader, liberal political-development agenda and that it adopts a vertical (rather than the traditional horizontal) understanding of the concept, involving broadly progressive, cumulative, and hierarchical spheres of Rule of Law conditions.

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Notes

  1. See Case 294/83 Les Verts v. Parliament [1986] ECR 1339, where the ECJ famously distinguished between the European Community (EC) and traditional International Organizations by, inter alia, defining the EC as a “Community based on the Rule of Law” (para. 23). For a detailed analysis of the Rule of Law in European legal traditions and EU law, see Ricardo Gosalbo-Bono (2010). For a discussion of the applicability of the notion of the Rule of Law at the international level, see Chesterman (2008).

  2. Statement on behalf of the EU and its Member States by Gilles Marhic, Minister Counsellor, Delegation of the EU to the UN, at the Sixth Committee on Agenda item 83: The Rule of Law at the national and international levels (10 October 2014) (available at: http://www.eu-un.europa.eu/articles/en/article_12682_en.htm).

  3. A discussion of regime classification lies beyond the scope of this paper. For a good overview of the literature and the current state of regime types, see Moller and Skaaning (2013).

  4. This is evident for example in the universal endorsement of the UN Declaration of the High-level Meeting on the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels (United Nations 2012). Similarly, out of a total of 47 UN Security Council Resolutions adopted in 2013, 25 (or 53 %) refer to the Rule of Law.

  5. On the different legal traditions and doctrines of European states in relation to the Rule of Law, see Gosalbo-Bono (2010): 240-258).

  6. Article 2 Treaty on European Union (TEU)

  7. Broadly speaking, Western Europe, some Scandinavian states, North America, and several former colonies of the British Empire (Australia, New Zealand, India, and Israel) (Huntington 1991).

  8. The broadening of the spectrum of regimes on the democratic side of the ledger can also be gleamed from the Freedom House Index figures of the last four decades. Whereas, in 1974, there were only 39 democracies in the world, all 39 ranked as “free” states—i.e., they were all reasonably high-quality, liberal democracies. In contrast, by 2003, out of the 117 states in the world tagged by Freedom House as constituting electoral democracies, only 88 qualified as “free”—meaning that approximately a third of all electoral democracies were in a diminished category of states that were only “partly free” (Freedom House 2005).

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  1. Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, IDC, Herzliya, Israel

    Amichai Magen

  2. Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Amichai Magen

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Magen, A. Overcoming the diversity-consistency dilemmas in EU Rule of Law external action. Asia Eur J 14, 25–41 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-015-0433-y

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