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Can the EU Protect Its Fundamental Values?

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The European Union in a Changing World Order

Abstract

This chapter explores the EU’s endeavours to define common, fundamental values and defend these against member states that are challenging them. The chapter provides an overview of how the EU’s fundamental values emerged and how they are used, as well as protective mechanisms created to monitor compliance with these values. A key argument in the chapter is that the EU’s various protective mechanisms seem not to be particularly user-friendly and it is possible that they were never meant to be that. But values protected by unusable mechanisms are at risk of being undermined, Wennerström argues. The author further argues that the member states that are intent on safeguarding the EU’s values should, first, confirm the prioritization of and convergence surrounding the values of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights and, second, support the European Commission in its earnest efforts to influence the member states that are challenging the values, since attempts to influence them politically via the EU Council of Ministers, where national interests tend to outweigh matters of principle, are unlikely to succeed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, Stockholm, Sweden

    Erik O. Wennerström

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  1. Erik O. Wennerström
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Correspondence to Erik O. Wennerström .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Law, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Antonina Bakardjieva Engelbrekt

  2. Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Niklas Bremberg

  3. Department of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Anna Michalski

  4. School of Business and Law, University of Agder (UiA), Kristiansand, Norway

    Lars Oxelheim

  5. Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm, Sweden

    Lars Oxelheim

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Wennerström, E.O. (2020). Can the EU Protect Its Fundamental Values?. In: Bakardjieva Engelbrekt, A., Bremberg, N., Michalski, A., Oxelheim, L. (eds) The European Union in a Changing World Order. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18001-0_10

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