After some delay, the Polish government, controlled by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, has finally responded to concerns raised by the European Commission about its legislative attack on judicial independence, but it is still refusing to cooperate and has not announced “any concrete measures to address the issues raised,” said Frans Timmermans, the commission’s first vice president.
It remains to be seen if the EU will use the political and economic tools at its disposal to sanction the Polish government. We believe it should — resolutely and swiftly.
The PiS’ efforts to bring Poland’s courts under political control violate the EU’s fundamental democratic values and threaten its governance of the single market. At this point, continued inaction on the EU’s part could threaten the project of economic integration altogether.
Market integration among economies at different levels of development relies primarily on regulatory standardization.
The single market works because an entrepreneur in the Netherlands and an entrepreneur in Poland can both expect to be governed by the same rules, regardless of whether they are selling goods or investing in Italy, Hungary, France or Bulgaria. These agreed rules are enforced not just by EU courts and bureaucracies, but also by national courts in the member states.
However, the EU’s framework for enforcing common rules does not automatically confer the same benefits to each member state.
When market integration was pursued in earnest in the 1980s, it was agreed that member states with less developed economies would be entitled to transfers until they had caught up with the bloc’s average level of development. Today, such transfers represent about a third of the EU budget and 2 to 5 percent of GDP in the recipient economies.
This arrangement was meant to reduce disparities among EU members to the point that transfers would no longer be needed, but it always had a crucial weakness — the EU has only limited authority to control the domestic institutions in charge of ensuring that recipient nations spend the funds appropriately, and a nation’s judiciary is chief among those institutions.
We have researched how evolving state capacities affect economic development in 17 central and eastern European nations, and we found that autonomous judiciaries are of central importance.
Capable, independent courts are the prime movers behind the development of a professional state bureaucracy. Without judicial oversight, there is no guarantee that supervisory agencies will monitor and enforce the rules of market competition effectively and impartially.
We have also found that increased judicial autonomy boosts economic development in nations even before they have joined the EU.
When a nation’s courts become more reliable and predictable, its exports tend to increase and become more technologically complex soon thereafter.
By the same token, judiciaries can hinder economic development if they are not independent or reliable. When domestic firms cannot count on courts to issue fair and consistent rulings, they will conclude that success depends less on entrepreneurship than on cronyism or loyalty to market incumbents. Accordingly, they will invest less and shy away from innovation.
Hungary’s recent experience demonstrates that if incumbents do not fear judicial oversight, they will engage in predatory behavior toward weaker market participants, thereby capturing larger segments of the economy. This ultimately results in declining public revenue, which forces the government to look for other ways to finance basic public goods. To keep the economy afloat and remain in power, the government will become all the more reliant on EU transfers.
The Polish and Hungarian governments have turned the worst nightmare of the single market’s founding fathers into a reality. In both nations, the institutions that could help domestic actors to benefit from market integration are being undermined — to say nothing of citizens’ rights and opportunities — even as the illiberal regimes causing this erosion continue to receive EU funds.
This state of affairs has exposed the limits of EU-level control over how the bloc’s money is spent within member states — and it shows that the development of domestic institutions can be reversed all too easily.
When the single market was created, many assumed that it would provide ample incentives for domestic firms and policymakers to develop sound national-level institutions, to capitalize on lucrative new opportunities, but that assumption’s flaws have now been laid bare.
The tragedy in Greece after the financial crisis a decade ago showed that incumbents will not necessarily take it upon themselves to develop strong institutions. In Poland and Hungary today, we are learning that illiberal governments will even go so far as to weaken their own nation’s institutions for political gain.
The time has come for the EU to take bold action before other member-state governments try the same trick.
Laszlo Bruszt is sociology professor at the Central European University in Budapest and at Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy. Nauro Campos is economics and finance professor at Brunel University London and a research professor at ETH-Zurich, Switzerland.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
The cancelation this week of President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visit to Eswatini, after the Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius revoked overflight permits under Chinese pressure, is one more measure of Taiwan’s shrinking executive diplomatic space. Another channel that deserves attention keeps growing while the first contracts. For several years now, Taipei has been one of Europe’s busiest legislative destinations. Where presidents and foreign ministers cannot land, parliamentarians do — and they do it in rising numbers. The Italian parliament opened the year with its largest bipartisan delegation to Taiwan to date: six Italian deputies and one senator, drawn from six
Recently, Taipei’s streets have been plagued by the bizarre sight of rats running rampant and the city government’s countermeasures have devolved into an anti-intellectual farce. The Taipei Parks and Street Lights Office has attempted to eradicate rats by filling their burrows with polyurethane foam, seeming to believe that rats could not simply dig another path out. Meanwhile, as the nation’s capital slowly deteriorates into a rat hive, the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection has proudly pointed to the increase in the number of poisoned rats reported in February and March as a sign of success. When confronted with public concerns over young
Taiwan and India are important partners, yet this reality is increasingly being overshadowed in current debates. At a time when Taiwan-India relations are at a crossroads, with clear potential for deeper engagement and cooperation, the labor agreement signed in February 2024 has become a source of friction. The proposal to bring in 1,000 migrant workers from India is already facing significant resistance, with a petition calling for its “indefinite suspension” garnering more than 40,000 signatures. What should have been a straightforward and practical step forward has instead become controversial. The agreement had the potential to serve as a milestone in
China has long given assurances that it would not interfere in free access to the global commons. As one Ministry of Defense spokesperson put it in 2024, “the Chinese side always respects the freedom of navigation and overflight entitled to countries under international law.” Although these reassurances have always been disingenuous, China’s recent actions display a blatant disregard for these principles. Countries that care about civilian air safety should take note. In April, President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) canceled a planned trip to Eswatini for the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s coronation and the 58th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic
RSS