“The overarching goal of the Polish referendum is to exploit anti-German sentiments and identity-based anxieties centered around migration,” our re:constitution Fellow Edit Zgut-Przybylska said to AP.

Rule of Law
Attacks on rule of law have long been integral to democratic decay. However, today’s authoritarians often instrumentalize law and democratic norms. Most research in this field focuses on the law or politics. The Institute, by contrast, will bring together lawyers, political scientists, sociologists and political economists to explore the how the erosion of rule of law shapes national developmental models and the extent to which it varies across economic sectors or through the influence of domestic or external actors.
Researchers
Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov | Lead Researcher / Senior Research Fellow / CEU Professor |
Petr Agha | Research Affiliate |
Petra Bard | CEU Research Affiliate |
Elena Basheska | Research Affiliate |
Mariam Begadze | CEU Doctoral Fellow |
Rodion Belkovich | Research Affiliate |
Violeta Besirevic | CEU Research Affiliate |
Andrey Bystrov | Research Affiliate |
Sarah Ganty | CEU Research Affiliate |
Oliver Garner | Editor / Post-doctoral Fellow / re:constitution Fellow |
Barbara Grabowska-Moroz | Post-doctoral Fellow |
Joelle Grogan | Senior Research Fellow |
Martin Krygier | Senior Research Fellow |
Rafal Manko | Research Affiliate |
Laurent Pech | Senior Research Fellow |
Wojciech Sadurski | Senior Research Fellow |
Andras Sajo | Senior Research Fellow / CEU Professor |
Renata Uitz | Senior Research Fellow |
Garvan Walshe | Research Affiliate |
Edit Zgut-Przybylska | re:constitution Fellow |
Projects
News
“The judiciary needs to strike down Netanyahu’s judicial reform before he turns Israel into a sham democracy—just as Viktor Orban did in Hungary,” our Research Affiliate Garvan Walshe argues in Foreign Policy.
Nobody wants to humiliate Hungary, our Research Affiliate Petra Bard argued in an interview with Hungarian weekly Jelen.
“The process of erosion of democracy and the rule of law […] has led to the involvement of the EU institutions in the process of protecting the values on which the EU […] is built,” our Post-doctoral Fellow Barbara Grabowska-Moroz writes in the Wiktor Osiatynski Archive’s special report Unleashing the Power of EU Law.
The rule of law has traditionally been conceived of as being limited to applying to public actors, including in the European Union. Yet the rule of law is meant to protect individuals from the arbitrary exercise of power, Jacquelyn D. Veraldi (University of Groningen) writes in the latest CEU DI Working Paper.
Audiovisuals
Co-organized with re:constitution and RECONNECT, the first public event of CEU Democracy Institute’s Rule of Law Working Group allowed key DI experts engaged with the case-law to outline the bigger picture, while focusing on crucial details.
Luiza Bialasiewicz, Nikolaus Forgo, Joelle Grogan, Oskar Gstrein and Dimitry Kochenov discussed European vaccine passports and their impact on the citizens’ rights and the Rule of Law in Europe.
Debates on the state of democracy in EU Member States have been intensifying. In a debate organized by the CEU Democracy Institute, chaired by Dimitry Kochenov and moderated by R. Daniel Kelemen, Vera Jourova, Clement Beaune and Michal Simecka addressed the question how to strengthen democracy at the national level.
Oliver Garner interviews Professor Dimitry Kochenov on the prospects for Member State to Member State infringement actions to enforce the Rule of Law in the EU.
Oliver Garner interviews Professor Petra Bard (CEU and Eötvös Loránd University) on the new regime of budget conditionality to enforce the Rule of Law in the European Union.