Why the EU's rule-of-law report is toothless

Democracy in the EU is on a downward spiral. Protestors face violent pushback, traditional media is increasingly coming under political pressure, and human rights activists are ignored or treated with hostility. 

Meanwhile, the EU, which has significant leverage over member states, is letting its frontline tool against democratic erosion — its rule of law reporting cycle — go to waste. 

The rule of law is the framework that upholds democracy, making it a tangible aspect of our daily lives instead of a stuffy, abstract concept. It is made up of interlocking structures, such as a free media that allows journalists to criticise politicians, and independent courts, which step in when people are denied their rights. 

Simply put, without the rule of law, democracy will cave. 

Every year, the EU Commission publishes a report examining how well the rule of law is faring in member states. The Commission’s annual report assesses governments’ performance in maintaining the rule of law framework, highlights their strengths and weaknesses, and provides recommendations to fix rule of law violations. 

The commission envisages the rule of law report as a buffer against authoritarianism and a tool to strengthen democracy in the EU. 

In theory, this sounds promising (and desperately needed). But in practice, the commission’s reporting cycle risks becoming ornate window dressing. 

Fudging the findings

A criticism often levied at the commission vis-à-vis its rule of law report is that it is more interested in appearing to protect democracy than actually doing so. 

In the EU Commission 2025 rule-of-law report, 93 percent of all recommendations were repeated from previous years, often verbatim

Evidence of this superficialness can be found in the way the commission formulates recommendations to governments and tracks their progress.

According to Liberties’ Gap Analysis, recommendations are often vague and repetitive, and in the 2025 report, 93 percent of all recommendations were repeated from previous years, often verbatim. 

Another sign is the reduction of new recommendations, which underscores the omission of serious emerging issues that undermine democracy.

For example, in Italy and Slovakia, certain significant violations including attacks on the judiciary, NGOs, and media were omitted from this year’s report. For a preventive tool, these are exactly the kind of attacks on democracy that should have been reported on and swift action taken.  

The murkiness of the commission’s criteria for assessing member states’ progress in implementing recommendations has led to scepticism towards positive evaluations, particularly when human rights organisations working on the ground experience a different reality. 

Taken together, these shortcomings paint a picture of a watered-down accountability system whose value risks being mostly symbolic. So it's of little surprise that national capitals don’t take it seriously. 

Flaunting the recommendations

One of the biggest flaws with the rule of law reporting cycle is the lack of enforcement mechanisms for member states that fail or make little to no progress in implementing recommendations.

With minimal consequences, there is a troubling trend of countries ignoring the commission’s recommendations entirely.

Liberties’ Gap Analysis found that the share of ‘fully implemented’ recommendations dropped by nearly half, from a woeful 11 percent in 2023 to a dismal six percent in 2024-2025.

In the three years since the commission included recommendations in its assessment, Hungary and Slovakia have continued to bulldoze their democracies unperturbed. Even countries with traditionally robust democracies, such as Belgium, Germany, Sweden and France, are getting worse rather than better. 

It’s clear that those responsible for this democratic decline — either through deliberate destruction or wilful ignorance — cannot be relied on to address these issues of their own initiative.

And yet that’s precisely the approach the EU has taken. 

The most infuriating aspect in all of this is that the commission has levers it can pull to apply pressure to member states, but they are underused.

Different budget conditionality mechanisms, which allow the commission to withhold money from EU states for rule of law and fundamental rights violations, exist.

However, even when used against Hungary, the commission was criticised for undermining its own powers by later unfreezing some of the funds without the conditions being met. 

The EU's current approach of allowing governments to implement recommendations of their own initiative is, at best, naive, and at worst, collusion. 

It also amounts to an abandonment of the human rights defenders, journalists and concerned citizens trying to hold political representatives accountable and steer their government back on course, but instead find themselves iced out or facing an increasingly repressive environment.

The solutions are clear.

First, reform the reporting cycle so that the process of issuing and tracking the implementation of recommendations is clear and transparent, and recommendations are targeted, time-bound and followed up. 

Second, strengthen enforcement measures, including infringement proceedings and linking recommendations to the EU budget, a direction already indicated in the 2028-2034 Multi-Annual Financial Framework, so that persistent rule of law breaches and failures to implement recommendations promptly result in funds being withheld. 

Both steps are crucial if the EU genuinely intends its rule of law reporting cycle to be a preventative measure against democratic decay.

Activists and many concerned citizens are taking the warning signals of authoritarianism seriously, but are repeatedly let down by the commission’s non-action. It’s long overdue for the EU to get off the fence and use its full firepower.

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