Efficiency of the rule of law compliance monitoring by the European Commission

Abstract

The relevance of this article lies in demonstration of the problematic aspects of the rule of law monitoring in the European Union by means of analysis and critics of the European Commission’s activities concerning monitoring the adherence to the rule of law value by the member states of the EU. The goal of the article is the demonstration of the results of the research thesis concerning peculiarities of the rule of law value oversight within the internal politics of the EU and acquaintance of the scientific community with the problematic aspects of practical realization of the rule of law value and some possible ways of their resolution. During the research formal legal method has been used during the analysis of the content of the report materials provided by the European Commission and Council of the European Union, as well as Court of Justice of the European Union decisions, with the help of which the genuine results of the EU institutions’ monitoring of the legal activities of the governing bodies of the member states of the EU have been established. Methods of structural and logical analysis and synthesis have been used to distinguish the contradiction between the structural elements of the EU institutions’ reports and the conclusions, provided as a result of state of the rule of law monitoring in some of the EU member states. Legal comparative method has made it possible to reveal the inconsistency in the European Commission’s approach towards the value of rule of law implementation oversight in EU member states’ legal orders by means of direct comparison of the rule of law reports contents. As a result of the research, a conclusion about the incompetence and inconsistency of the European Commission in a row of situations concerning the oversight of the value of rule of law has been drawn, and a new conceptual approach, which implies the revision of the existing approaches towards member states values adherence evaluation has been suggested. The problematic aspects and suggested approaches, that have been distinguished, are at the basis of formation of the new vision of the European Commission’s role in the EU values implementation, which can become a subject for future research.