Time for the Gloves to Come Off?: The Response by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to Rule of Law Backsliding

What is it about?

When governments go to extreme lengths to consolidate their power—by ‘stacking’ the courts or otherwise undermining the independence of the judiciary, by attacking human rights defenders or the media, and by systematically weakening watchdog institutions—we expect other states to not be idle bystanders. We also expect international organisations to reign in any rule of law and human rights ‘backsliding’ states in their midst, and remind them of the commitments they entered into when joining the organisation. In Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe—as a forum of debate for parliamentarians from 47 states from across the continent—is uniquely placed to do just that: through its distinctively public peer-to-peer monitoring procedure, it can expose shortcomings and exert pressure on backsliding states. Yet, case studies on four European states that have exhibited severe rule of law backsliding in recent years—Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Azerbaijan—reveal the limitations of the Parliamentary Assembly’s monitoring procedure, which is slow and episodic, extremely contentious and vulnerable to political instrumentalisation. Against this backdrop, this article suggests that the time is ripe for the Assembly to consider root-and-branch reform of its monitoring procedure. Only if it is applied rigorously and in tandem with the (threat of) sanctions can the Assembly retain its credibility as a body committed to countering rule of law backsliding.

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