Two Approaches to Poland and Hungary’s Breach of the Rule of Law : A Comparative Study on the Rule of Law Response Mechanisms in the European Union

The Rule of Law is one of the European Union’s founding values and is not only a Treaty obligation under Article 2 Treaty on European Union but also a part of the accession criteria for potential Member States of the Union. Therefore, the Rule of Law is part of the foundation of the European Union’s institutional order, and fundamental to European integration. During the past several years concerns have been raised regarding the Rule of Law in the Union and especially regarding Poland and Hungary. The European Union has established a comprehensive response function to breaches of the Rule of Law which both Member States have been subject to. However, there are differences in the procedure and different mechanisms have been used in relation to the two Member States, and while neither the Rule of Law nor the response mechanisms available are unstudied subjects neither for social sciences nor the legal community there is a lack of research combining the two fields and comparing the Member States. This study has been conducted with the goal to fill this gap by conducting a comparative study on the Rule of Law responses at the European Union’s disposal and using Poland and Hungary as the cases addressed. The study attempts to find a correlation between the breaches within the Rule of Law committed by the Member States and the responses used by the European Union to find motivations for why it is justified to approach the Member States differently. To accomplish this the study compares first the breaches found by the European Commission in the respective Member States and then the response mechanisms used to address the concerns. By conducting this comparative analysis, the study has found significant motivations behind the different approaches used by the European Union which shows a correlation between the concerns raised and the European Union’s approach to address the concerns. The result of the study shows that it is motivated to use different approaches despite the two Member States breaching the same value.