Event

Safeguarding the rule of law and democracy in Europe using financial means

The rule of law and democracy in Europe are under threat. What can the EU and Norway do?

24 March 2023

10:00 Europe/Oslo

Language: English

NUPI

Seminar

Themes

For more than a decade, the rule of law and democracy have weakened in various EU Member States, jeopardising mechanisms of European cooperation. How have EU institutions reacted to this phenomenon? What means have they used to restore compliance with the EU’s founding principles?

In this panel discussion, Professor Kim Scheppele (Princeton University) and Professor John Morijn (University of Groningen) will discuss how the deterioration of the rule of law and democracy affect solidarity and cooperation within the EU and beyond. The speakers will then examine the different mechanisms that the EU has set up in response, with a particular focus on financial conditionality which is of relevance in the EEA context too.

This event is part of the seminar series Norway and the EU towards 2030.

It will be moderated by Christophe Hillion, Research Professor at NUPI and Professor of European law at the University of Oslo.

The seminar will also be streamed live to NUPI’s YouTube channel (no registration needed for digital participation).

Kim Lane Scheppele is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her work focuses on the rise of autocratic legalism first in Hungary and then in Poland within the European Union, as well as its spread around the world. She has held full-time positions at the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania and Central European University, and has held visiting faculty positions in the law schools at Yale, Harvard, Erasmus/Rotterdam, and Humboldt/Berlin. Her book, Destroying Democracy by Law, is forthcoming from Harvard University Press in 2024.

John Morijn is a commissioner at the Dutch National Human Rights Institution, a professor of law and politics in international relations at the University of Groningen Faculty of Law and chair of the rule of law sub-group of the Meijers Committee (Standing Committee of Experts on International Migration, Refugee and Criminal Law), a Dutch NGO composed of judges, attorneys, scholars and issue specific NGOs working to promote compliance with EU and international law, transparency and democratic control and the overall public debate on these issues since 1991.