Since 2020 the European Commission has published its Annual Rule of Law Report. The Commission Report primarily aims to prevent rule of law decline among the European Union (EU) Member States. Since 2022 the report formulates recommendations in four key areas: the justice system, the anti-corruption framework, media pluralism and freedom, and other issues related to checks and balances. The 2024 edition of the annual report was further broadened and includes an assessment of four candidate countries for accession to the EU. However, despite such changes, the state of the rule of law at the EU level remains outside the scope of the EU Annual Rule of Law Report. At the same time, decisions taken (or not taken) by the EU institutions in the rule of law field are critically relevant to the situation in Member States. This publication aims to fill this gap in evaluation and outline the main issues concerning the rule of law in the EU institutions and procedures.
This report finds that, while the rule of law is embraced and presented as a foundational value of the European Union, self-assessment of rule of law standards at the EU institutional level is severely lacking in a number of areas including inter alia mutual recognition in criminal matters and migration management.
