Appeasement, ad infinitum
| Author | Roger Daniel Kelemen |
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X221097648 |
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Appeasement, ad infinitum
Roger Daniel Kelemen
Never underestimate the European Commission’s willingness to appease Europe’s pet autocrats.
1
While the EU has made an impressive show of unity in standing up to the murderous dictator
Vladimir Putin in response to his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, EU leaders continue to refuse
to stand up to the softer autocrats in their own ranks. The capacity of the von der Leyen
Commission (and of Commissions before it) to contrive excuses for refusing to enforce the EU
rule of law norms that all Member States have committed to respect is something awesome to
behold. The excuses keep changing, but the procrastination and appeasement are consistent.
Over the past decade we have seen successive Commissions draw –sometimes explicitly, some-
times implicitly –on an impressive panoply of excuses for their failure to defend the rule of law m ore
robustly. These have included: lacking the necessary ‘tools’to defend rule of law, needing to allow
more time for ‘dialogue’with backsliders, having to produce reports on rule of law in all Member
States to show allwere being treated equally,waiting for critical ECJ rulings and waiting forthe reso-
lution of a majorcrisis that must take priorityover defending the ruleof law –first it was the eurozone
crisis, then the refugee crisis, then Brexit and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
To be clear, all of these excuses were bogus: the EU had robust tools in place to defend rule of
law all along and the creation of new tools was mostly used as excuse to delay action; producing
toothless reports on rule of law in all Member States was pointless, and scofflaws claimed they were
treated unequally in any case; suspending the application of EU regulations pending the outcome of
ECJ rulings (i.e. in annulment actions such as Cases C-156/21 Hungary v. Parliament and Council
and C-157/21 Poland v. Parliament and Council) is unlawful, and political crises are no excuse for
suspending law enforcement. Indeed, it is deeply ironic that while Ukrainians are fighting and dying
to defend democracy and the rule of law, the Commission is using the crisis as an excuse to abandon
the defence of those very values.
*Guest editorials at the MJECL represent a personal opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the
MJECL and its constituting bodies.
Corresponding author:
R. Daniel Kelemen, Professor of Political Science and Law, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
Email: dkelemen@polisci.rutgers.edu
1. R.D. Kelemen, ‘Europe’s Pet Autocrats’,Aspen Review (2018), https://www.aspen.review/article/2018/europes-pet-
autocrats/.
Editorial
Maastricht Journal of European and
Comparative Law
2022, Vol. 29(2) 177–181
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1023263X221097648
maastrichtjournal.sagepub.com
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