Susana Sanz Caballero, Professor of International Public Law, has organised, as part of the projects she leads on the crisis of the rule of law in the European Union, an International Conference that has brought together academic experts, researchers and legal operators for two intense days of reflection, the purpose of which has been to propose alternatives on how to overcome the democratic regression that threatens the values of the EU.
On 17 and 18 October was held at the Valencia headquarters of the CEU Cardenal Herrera University (UCH-CEU), in the Colomina Palace, the international conference Overcoming the Crisis of Democratic Values in the European Union, an event that is part of the activities organised in the framework of the projects “Crisis of the Rule of Law in the EU. Special reference to Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Estonia, Spain and Italy and the incidence of the pandemic”, PID2021-126765NB-I00 of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, and AICO/2021/099 of the GVA. The congress brought together 70 participants from all over Europe and had more than 30 speakers, moderators and panellists who presented their papers.
The conference was a success not only because of the interest shown by the public, but also because of the very high level of the interventions that took place and the rich debate that was generated, as well as the conclusions reached by all the congress participants. These conclusions will be translated into a decalogue that will soon be published by the research team in a policy brief. This document aims to provide European, national and regional decision-makers, as well as citizens, with recipes that can modestly help to overcome the crisis of values that we are suffering today in the European Union.
The opening ceremony was chaired by Alicia López Castellano, vice-rector of research at the UCH-CEU, who from the outset indicated the great responsibility of the university to denounce any kind of step backwards in the respect for democratic values. In the same vein, the conference organiser and Professor of International Public Law Susana Sanz, stressed that the university must always fulfil one of its main functions, which is to identify, investigate and report any violation of democratic values, which are the basis for the respect of academic freedom and freedom of expression. For his part, the Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Valencia (UV), Antonio Bar Cendón, who is co-IP together with Susana Sanz of the Ministry’s research project, thanked the authorities present in the room and the UCH for having agreed to lead a research project of these characteristics, as well as to host an international conference on such a critical issue for our future, while the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Business and Political Sciences, Esperanza Ferrando, stressed that the Faculty she directs is determined to continue to be a loudspeaker to inform and report on attacks that occur against democratic values such as democracy, Esperanza Ferrando, Dean of the Faculty of Law, Business and Political Science of the UCH-CEU, emphasised that the Faculty she directs is determined to continue to be a loudspeaker that informs and reports on attacks on democratic values such as legal certainty, the division of powers, the principle of legality and the defence of human rights.
Once the opening ceremony was over and the event was declared open by the corresponding academic authorities, Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque, Professor at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon and former judge of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), was the special guest responsible for delivering the opening speech of the event.
How do you draw attention to the fact that there is a dangerous drift in the rule of law in Europe as a judge of the ECtHR when the majority of the members of the Court choose not to address that issue in their judgment? Defending the rule of law at the stroke of a separate opinion. This is how one could sum up what Judge Pinto de Alburquerque did from 2011 onwards, when he was the Portuguese member of this Court.
Their separate opinions (mostly dissenting, though sometimes partially concurring) opened the way for the ECtHR to realise that there were indeed states party to the ECHR where judges were harassed, the judicial council politicised, national judges who upheld the separation of powers were dismissed or defenestrated, or politicised judges were appointed.
Pinto de Alburquerque pointed the way in some early rulings in which he was in the minority, but which gradually left their mark on the Court’s jurisprudence to the point that the ECtHR gradually turned its attention to the symptoms of violations of democratic values which, subtly and surreptitiously and always under the guise of fully legal reforms, were being introduced by some executives and legislators of certain states party to the ECHR which, in turn, are members of the EU.
Judge Pinto de Alburquerque, with his lecture ‘Independence of the Judiciary and the Rule of Law in Europe’, in which he reviewed the saga of cases in which the ECtHR, thanks to his invaluable help, has been developing a whole jurisprudential doctrine on the vital importance of respecting judicial independence and the separation of powers in Europe.
This was followed by the first round table, entitled ‘How to protect our values’, which aimed to lay the foundations and introductory framework for, among other things, the mechanisms available to the EU to protect the rule of law.
Fruzsina Orosz, professor at the Faculty of Law at ELTE University in Budapest, researcher at the HUN-REN Institute for Legal Studies and Social Sciences and member of the research team, moderated the first round table of the congress, in which the first speakers were Antonio Bar, also a member of the research teams PID2021-126765NB-I00 and AICO/2021/099, the founder of the Rule of Law Clinic at the Central European University of Budapest (CEU) Dimitry Kochenov and the professor of Constitutional Law at UV and former president of the European Committee of Social Rights of the Council of Europe, Luis Jimena.
The interventions were particularly rich and perfectly complementary.
While Professor Bar reviewed the tortuous and long historical process through which democratic values were finally written down as such values in Article 2 of the TEU in the Treaty of Lisbon, Professor Kochenov wondered whether the EU itself and its institutions are in a position to give lessons in democracy to its Member States, given that, in his words, there is a serious democratic deficit in the EU and decisions are taken today that are contrary to the values that the EU claims to represent, such as the European Pact on Migration and the role played by the Frontex agency in the expulsion of vulnerable migrants.
The roundtable concluded with the participation of Professor Jimena who, faithful to his social sensitivity, stressed that there is a part of democratic values that the EU ignores and they are those that have to do with social rights, which seem to be second-class rights compared to other more liberal rights. Professor Jimena called for the defence of not only a political Europe but also a social Europe and stressed that democracy is not only represented by the former but also by the latter.
The second round table, led by the professor of Political Science at UV, Clara Portela Sais, and member of the research teams PID2021-126765NB-I00 and AICO/2021/099, was dedicated to information and media pluralism. The panel was attended by the member of the research team and professor of Philosophy of Law at UCH-CEU Leopoldo García Ruiz, the professor at Ramon Llull University of Barcelona and director of the DIGILAB research group Jaume Suau, and the professor at San Pablo CEU University and member of the University Institute of European Studies (IUEE), Belén Becerril Atienza.
The round table provided an accurate diagnosis of the ills affecting European society from the perspective of information pluralism and the defence of freedom of expression.
Among other topics, the meeting provided reliable data on the exponential increase in cases of disinformation campaigns, the dangerous concentration of media that exists and the lack of transparency regarding who their owners are. It also discussed the curtailment of freedom of expression that has been increasing since the times of the pandemic, the harassment of certain media under the pretext of supposed democratic regeneration, and the danger of political authorities deciding what are “pseudo-media”.
During the panel discussion, Professor Suau also presented the results of the Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM), both those relating to the EU and those relating to Spain. Professor Suau heads the research group Digitalab: Media, Strategy and Regulation, whose data feeds the Rule of Law Report published annually by the European Commission. The results of the MPM are not very positive for our country, since the data show a decline in media freedom and information pluralism in recent years.
The third and final round table on the 17th, chaired by Professor of Sociology at the University of Zagreb Dario Čepo, who is also a member of the research team led by Professor Sanz, was dedicated to finding solutions to the growing wave of distrust that looms over the work carried out by our political leaders due to the emergence and exponential growth of populism in Europe.
Within the framework of this roundtable, the Secretary General of the Hay Derecho Foundation and retired State Attorney, Elisa De la Nuez, presented the results of the latest report of the Hay Derecho Foundation, published in September. This report measures the strength of the Rule of Law in Spain according to several indicators such as the strength of the legislative power, the judiciary, the public prosecutor’s office, the protection of human rights, institutional counterweights, independent authorities and accountability, transparency and the fight against corruption. This report has the particularity of being used by the European Commission to feed into the EU Rule of Law Report. Comparing the Hay Derecho Foundation’s 2024 report with the first one published by the Foundation the previous year, it can be seen that the situation has worsened with respect to all the indicators indicated above, with the only window of hope represented by the agreement reached in June by which the new president of the CGPJ was elected and the new members were appointed, ending 5 years of inexplicable interim status.
For his part, Zoltán Szente, a researcher at the HUN-REN Institute for Legal Studies and Social Sciences in Budapest, explained the very serious situation faced by Hungary, the first EU member country to systematically undermine the rule of law with the arrival in power (for the second time) of Viktor Orbán, a populist and nationalist leader who, however, enjoys majority support from the population and who systematically attacks the separation of powers, the freedom of action of civil society organisations and freedom of the media, and under whose regime recurring scandals due to corruption cases occur.
Professor Jan Wouters, director of the Institute of International Law at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies in Leuven, Belgium, focused his presentation on the case of Belgium, surprising the audience, since this country is not one of those usually targeted by EU states that violate democratic values. Professor Wouters pointed out how anti-pluralist populism is also taking its toll in the country that is the main headquarters of the EU, especially due to the emergence of parties in the political spectrum that are clearly inclined towards nationalist, identity-based, exclusionary and xenophobic theses, which play on feelings of belonging in a country in which, already from the outset, there is a clear gap between the Flemish and Walloon communities.
The Friday session of the congress began with the last of the round tables, dedicated to judicial independence and separation of powers, which was followed by the parallel development of two communication panels in each of which the oral defense of their work by 7 panelists was hosted and ended with the presentation of two of the main results of the projects – the recent book published in December 2023 by the Thomson Reuters-Aranzadi publishing house and the project’s database, by professors Manuel Martínez Sospedra and Carlos González Tormo.
First of all, Barbara Grabowska-Moroz, director of the Rule of Law Clinic at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, was in charge of leading the last round table discussion, which addressed, from the point of view of three legal operators – two of them national and one from Romania – the delicate subject of judicial independence, which is an essential element of any solid democracy and a basic and unavoidable requirement of the principle of separation of powers.
On the one hand, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo Ibáñez, Counsel of the Council of State assigned to the Fourth Section (Defence and Industry), recalled the decision of the European Commission in May of this year to definitively deactivate the Article 7 procedure against Poland, as it no longer found any risks to the rule of law following the decisions taken by the new Polish Government, especially with regard to the implementation of judgments of the CJEU and the ECHR. He also appealed to the effort made by the CJEU in defending judicial independence; an effort that he considered of great value and, furthermore, complementary to the role played by other EU institutions such as the European Commission regarding the application of Article 7 TEU.
For his part, Dragoș Călin, a judge at the Bucharest Court of Appeal, courageously addressed the issue of judicial counter-reforms in Romania and the role of national judges in preserving the independence of the judiciary in the country. In this regard, he stated that in the period between 2018 and 2019, several legislative amendments were adopted in Romania that were highly detrimental in the field of justice and the judiciary, as they led to the limitation of the freedom of expression of judges and prosecutors, as well as the adoption of provisions – in his own words – unacceptable in terms of the accountability of judges and prosecutors.
Regarding the role of national judges in preserving judicial independence in Romania, he highlighted the efforts of judges who, both individually and within professional associations, have submitted preliminary questions to the CJEU in order to denounce irregular practices that undermine the independence of the judiciary in the country.
Likewise, José Miguel De la Rosa Cortina, a Public Prosecutor assigned to the Civil Division of the Supreme Court, addressed in an equally courageous manner the issue of the role and situation of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Spain. In this way, he explained how the Public Prosecutor’s Office is integrated into the judicial system with functional autonomy and how it carries out its mission of promoting justice in defense of the law, of the rights of citizens, as well as the pursuit of the general interest. Finally, he stated that the Public Prosecutor’s Office has the primary function of guaranteeing the independence of judges and that the transparency and perception of independence of the judiciary depend on its correct functioning.
After the last round table, the congressmen moved to the two rooms where the panelists presented their papers. Panel A was chaired by Professor Antonio Bar and Panel B by Professor Susana Sanz. The papers were extremely rich, as were the rich and varied approaches from which they addressed the decline of the rule of law and democratic values in Europe.
Panel A included: Carlos González Tormo, associate professor of Political Sciences at UCH-CEU, with a paper entitled “European elections 2014-2024: the decade of populism and euroscepticism”; Nuria Hernández García, associate professor and doctor of Political Sciences at UCH-CEU, with her paper “New Pact of Asylum: limiting rights under the Rule of Law”; Gisela Hernández González, predoctoral researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), with her paper “Expect the best, prepare for the worst? EU Council anticipation for Presidencies in the Rule of Law case”; Regina Laguna Micó, associate professor of EU Law at UV, with her paper “Press freedom and fight against misinformation in times of war”; Mónica Martínez López-Sáez, associate professor of Constitutional Law at the UV, with her communication: “Crisis is the mother of invention: transparency as the backbone of Rule of Law in the fight against corruption in the EU”; Iván Luis Martínez Villanueva and José Luis Diego, Project Manager and Coordinator, respectively, of the European Projects Section of the Local Police of Valencia, with their communication: “EU-HYBNET EUROPEAN PROJECT: A paneuropean effort to fight against the hybrid threats”; and, finally, Cristina Pastor Roca, member of the CEU Centre for Studies, Training and Social Analysis (CEU-CEFAS), with her communication: “The treatment of Foreign Terrorist Fighters as a sign of the crisis in the EU”.
Panel B included: Almudena Del Castillo Santamaría, research assistant on the project led by Dr. Sanz and a PhD student at UCH-CEU, with a paper entitled: “Judiciary independence in the European Union: A tale of attrition with a tireless case law. Persisting problems and… possible solutions?”; Peter Ehret, interim substitute professor in the Department of Philosophy of Law at the University of Granada, with his paper: “The European Social Union – a chance for democratic solidarity”; Juan Gálvez Galisteo, predoctoral researcher and PhD student at the University of Seville, with his paper: “Constitutional courts and upholding the rule of law in the European Union”; María Luisa Mena Durán, associate professor at the UCH-CEU Faculty of Law, with her paper: “Unpacking the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and human rights, democracy and the rule of law”; Zitan Peng Hao, predoctoral researcher at CEINDO and also research assistant on the project led by Dr. Sanz, with his paper: “To stay, or not to stay, that is the question”; Davor Petrić, postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb, with his paper: ‘Judges Cannot Depend on Other Judges’: Internal Judicial Independence in Croatia”; and finally, Helena Torroja Mateu, professor of Public International Law at the University of Barcelona (UB), with her paper: “The authoritarian drift of the Catalan radical democratic principle”.
Both panels provoked an enriching and interesting debate between the panelists themselves and the moderator and the audience.
Although the research projects PID2021-126765NB-I00 and AICO/2021/099 have given rise to numerous and relevant results (among them, the publication of 3 collective books directed by Susana Sanz, the publication of 14 individual books by the team members or the publication of more than 50 articles in indexed journals), the congress echoed two of the results. These are the latest collective book, entitled ¿La Europa de los valores? El declive del Estado de Derecho en la Unión Europea, and the database on the impact in the Spanish general press of news related to the decline of the Rule of Law between 2019 and 2023. The reason for selecting these two products is because of the impact they are having and their replicability.
The book was presented by two members of the team who represent, respectively, the voice of experience and the discourse of the new generations. Thus, the emeritus professor of Constitutional Law at UCH-CEU, Manuel Martínez Sospedra, outlined the symptoms of degeneration and social nihilism that are perceived in today’s society and that have led us to the situation of erosion of democratic values that the collective book portrays. For his part, Professor Carlos González Tormo presented the interactive database, tremendously intuitive and graphic and freely accessible, which he himself has designed with the help of researchers Nuria Hernández García, Zitan Peng Hao and Almudena Del Castillo Santamaría – who have fed data into the database that measures the appearance in the press of news related to issues of corruption, violation of judicial independence, contempt for counter-powers and harassment of non-aligned media and freedom of expression.
