The EU's democratic future may rest on two commissioner-designates

In theory, EU law requires democracy both at member state level and at the EU level. In reality, one member state — Hungary –— is no longer a democracy, and several others are under threat.

These domestic threats to democracy in turn undermine democracy at the EU level, potentially poisoning the Union as a whole.

The incoming European Commission’s policies on democracy protection both mischaracterise the threat and do not take it seriously enough.

Next week, when the European Parliament holds hearings for commissioners-designate, it should insist that they recognise the erosion of national democracies as a profound, home-grown threat to the Union and promise to tackle it head-on with the powerful tools already at their disposal.

Democracy features as one of the EU’s foundational values in Article 2 of the EU Treaty (TEU). Article 10 further details that the functioning of the Union must be based on representative democracy, with citizens being represented at EU level, both through the democratically elected European Parliament, and through their democratically elected national governments, operating in the (European) Council.

The legal requirement of multi-level representative democracy is also implicit in other EU norms, such as rules about European political parties. 

Today’s realities make a mockery of these professed norms.

Over the last decade the OSCE has consistently found that national elections organised in Hungary are not free and fair while leading international democracy-raters no longer classify Hungary as a democracy at all.

The problem is not contained at national level, as the EU has seen with Viktor Orbán flouting the norms of the rotating Council presidency and his new EU level Patriots for Europe Party pursuing leadership positions in parliament.

In other words, the Hungarian case shows how the rise of autocratic forces at the national level can infiltrate and undermine democratic institutions at the EU level.

The EU’s deep double democracy problem, which one of us described as the EU’s authoritarian equilibrium, raises fundamental challenges for the daily operation of the Union.  

The EU's internal implosion?

Despite this profound threat the commission is still dithering. The incoming commission led by Ursula von der Leyen does claim that defending democracy is one of its flagship concerns, but it pretends that the threat is mostly coming from abroad in the form of election interference and media manipulation.

It completely fails to recognise that the most pressing dangers are coming from inside the Union’s own house. This is reflective of its practice to draw clear lessons from external democracy ratings in addressing third states yet mostly ignore them when these concern member states. 

Instead, the new commission’s political guidelines mention softer initiatives like increasing media literacy and fact-checking.

They also mention the relevance of previously adopted legislation, such as the European Media Freedom Act and rules to prevent harassment of actors such as journalists and NGOs.

Spotlight on two particular commissioners-designate

Also the so-called “mission letters” of the two commissioners-designate who would be most responsible for defending democracy, Michael McGrath (Democracy, Justice and the Rule of Law) and Henna Virkkunen (Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy), suggest that the new commission would mainly focus on protecting democracy with a new policy called the “Democracy Shield”.

However, that “shield” would focus mostly on preventing foreign election interference with technical measures – again ignoring the fact that the primary threat to democracy in the EU is homegrown.

It is time for the European Parliament to demand that the commission face up to inconvenient truths and use the many tools at its disposal to confront them.

Orbán’s new Patriots party could clearly be deregistered and defunded

With commissioners-designate McGrath and Virkkunen set to have hearings on 5 and 12 November, the parliament has a real opportunity to press for action. 

The parliament’s recently published “advance questions” for the two nominees (here and here) barely mention the issue of democracy. Failing to demand action on this front would be a grave mistake. If the Parliament takes its role as the direct representative of EU citizens seriously, it must insist that the Commission use the tools already at its disposal to restore and defend democracy inside the Union.

For starters, current rules on financing of European political parties give the Commission the possibility to trigger a request for de-registration and de-funding of a European party if its actions — or those of its component members — violate EU values.

On this basis, Orbán’s new Patriots party could clearly be deregistered and defunded.

The Patriots are on record as having promised to comply with basic EU values in their programme and actions, while a number of their component parties are flouting EU law and undermining democracy at home.

Parliament can also insist the commission to start, and fast-track, infringement procedures when national democracy is directly attacked. While the commission has started to do this with Hungary, infringement actions taken so far barely scratch the surface of the democracy problem there.     

The parliament can also insist that the commission protect national media through infringement actions based on the right to vote, which includes the right to receive unbiased political information, as was previously proposed by one of us.

And it can ask the commission to promise it will consider expanding rule of law conditionality to include “democracy conditionality” after the Court of Justice announced in its conditionality decision that all of the values of Article 2 TEU constitute the “the very identity of the European Union as a common legal order”. 

Just as it is a threat to the budget if a member state violates rule of law requirements, it is a threat to the EU if its member states do not guarantee free and fair elections.   

Without democracy at national level, EU institutions rest on a rotten foundation. It is time for the newly-elected parliament to exercise its own democratic mandate by ensuring that the new commissioners prioritise democracy as a central value both at EU level and in the member states.