EU Law without the Rule of Law: Is the Veneration of Autonomy Worth It?

Summary:

That European Union (EU) law is based on the Rule of Law is one of the axioms of each EU lawyer’s world. This article investigates whether this axiom is true beyond the EU’s institutional self-assessment and scholarly applause.

The EU is not driven by the Rule of Law as an institutional ideal. Instead, the Union deploys the ‘Rule of Law’, viewed to a large extent through the lens of the autonomy of the EU legal order, to shield its law from potential internal and external contestation. This is precisely the opposite of what the classical understanding of the Rule of Law would imply. The perverse semantics of the Rule of Law in the EU legal context would not be worthy of a lengthy investigation, if it were not for the fact that the far-reaching destructive consequences of this perversion directly affect the very constitutional essence of the European Union and its Member States by undermining the values—the Rule of Law included—on which both constitutional levels are purportedly built. The problem is as fundamental as it is in plain view for all to see.

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