Blog: Is the EU Policy Project Failing?

Insights from CEU Center for Policy Studies research affiliate, Diane Stone, in connection with a newly published volume edited by Agnes Batory, Andrew Cartwright, and Diane Stone: Policy Experiments, Failures and Innovations (pre-order at Edward Elgar Publishing). The post was published at The Policy Space: An Australian blog for all things politics and policy.

Last week Transparency International released its annual corruption perceptions index. The Index paints a depressing picture regarding some Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries that are mis-using public funds and backsliding on the rule of law amidst clamp-downs on civil society groups and government statements against European Union (EU) values of democracy. In a book released on the 23rd of February -- Policy Experiments, Failures and Innovations: Beyond Accession in Central and Eastern Europe – the contributors argue that this trend has been occurring ever since many countries became EU member states.

Once the darlings of economic reform and democratic transition, certain Central European countries no longer capture the news headlines for their progressive policies.  In December 2016, the European Commission announced that it would sue Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic at the European Court of Justice for refusing to take in refugees. The EU is also suing Hungary for passage of a new higher education law that would likely force the closure of the Central European University (CEU) – the home institution for many of the contributors to this book.

A closer examination reveals that the turn away from the democratic norms of Europe and its policy exports has been coming for a long time. And it is not only a rejection of the EU but also other international institutions and ‘globalist values’.

Read the full post at The Policy space.