The intellectual sources of the EU Rule of Law crisis: In Conversation with Maciej Krogel

This latest RevDem Rule of Law podcast discusses the doctoral research of Dr. Maciej Krogel following the defence of his thesis “The intellectual sources of the European Union’s response to the rule of law crisis in the Member States”. Maciej is a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam and he completed a re:constitution fellowship in 2022/23.

Oliver Garner: Your Ph.D. traces the intellectual sources of the EU's response to the Rule of Law crisis in certain Member States.  This is a topic that we have covered since the inception of RevDem.  Could you summarise your key findings for our listeners and readers?

Maciej Krogel: Thanks a lot for asking me about it.  It is still brand new to me to be graduated from the EUI and I think you are the first person to ask me about my research in an interview.  So, indeed, I have written my thesis about the background conditions for the response of the European Union institutions to the Rule of Law crisis in the Member States.  A lot has been written about the Rule of Law crisis, about institutions, about judiciaries, and about the problems in the Member States in the recent years.  However, I think what was lacking, and what is lacking still, is the critical theory of the origins of what the European Union institutions are doing. We have some very specific critical accounts of, for example, the overly legalistic response or the democratic credentials of the response.  But I have decided to trace the origins of the Rule of Law response of the European Union to its earlier constitutional heritage, as I call it.

What has been lacking most of all, I think, has been situating the Rule of Law reactions, and also scholarship, within the broader constitutional heritage, concepts, ideas, and discussions of the European Union from the past decades.   For instance, on topics such as constitutional pluralism, constitutional change, and membership in the European Union. These were the three main strands that I selected for tracing the origins in my thesis.