INTERVIEW
Law in turbulent times Prof. Gráinne de Búrca speaks to The Bar Review about the EU’s response to the rise of illiberalism, and the challenges facing human rights movements. force of peace and prosperity, with free movement and integration of peoples. But we see the rise of something really challenging to all of that in recent years. My research looks at how the EU is faring as a project of cosmopolitan political and economic integration in an era of rising nationalism and rising
Ann-Marie Hardiman Managing Editor, Think Media Ltd.
illiberalism”. She acknowledges that the very nature of the government by consensus that is the hallmark of the EU means that holding governments like those in Hungary and Poland to account for their actions is difficult and complex. She
Gráinne de Búrca is regarded as one of the leading experts on European Union
feels that what she calls the “supranational institutions” – the European
(EU) law, although the Florence Ellinwood Allen Professor of Law at NYU says
Commission, the Court of Justice, even the European Parliament – have begun
it’s something she came to almost by accident: “I was working in Oxford,
to take action, and to make clear that the actions of the Polish and Hungarian
focused mainly on criminal law and jurisprudence, but at that time they
Governments are incompatible with EU membership and EU law. However, the
urgently needed people to teach EU law. The more I taught it, the more
political and mainly intergovernmental institutions, such as the Council of
interested I became in it. It has everything: constitutional law, economic law,
Ministers and the European Council, have been less successful, and Gráinne is
international law. Teaching and research are closely connected; when you're
critical of the stance they have taken: “The member state governments
teaching, you really need to understand the subject. I very quickly got
themselves and the Council have soft pedalled on this. I think that's had a
swallowed up by my own interest and became a specialist in the field”.
really bad effect in terms of allowing Poland and Hungary's strong drive
Gráinne’s current research interest is the rise of illiberalism in the EU and
towards the authoritarian end of the political spectrum to go unchecked”.
beyond, and the response of the EU’s political and legal mechanisms to this.
She feels that it’s both a case of the laws not being stringent enough, and also of
She focuses particularly on the current tensions with Hungary and Poland,
the existing laws not being put to use effectively: “Recently, there was a move
where the ruling parties have become increasingly authoritarian, repressing
politically to adopt a form of ‘funding conditionality’, to make the grant of funds
civil society and freedom of expression, and undermining the judiciary and the
either under the normal structural and cohesion funds (or, in a slightly different
rule of law. Gráinne sees these states as the extreme end of a spectrum that
way, in the context of the ‘next generation’ funds, the pandemic stimulus funding)
has seen far right organisations appear, and increase in prominence, in many
conditional on compliance with ‘fundamental EU values’ as they're called in the
countries, and which seems to go against the very purpose of the EU: “The
EU Treaty, which include democracy, human rights and the rule of law. But the
EU was all about breaking down national barriers, transnationalism as the new
European Council did a deal to postpone its coming into force until Poland and
THE BAR REVIEW : Volume 27; Number 1 – February 2022
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