A value-based EU Values crisis? Between enforcement tools and political narratives

Abstract

Throughout the European project, the Institutions have sought a narrative to justify their actions and the existence of a community that would stand strong yet accommodate Europe’s diversity. This led to the codification of the Values of the European Union in the Treaty of Lisbon. Since then, the EU has been at the centre of a succession of crises that have greatly impacted its legitimacy. The progressive highlighting of the Union’s weaknesses, combined with the lack of safeguards of the EU Values, supposed foundational principles of EU law, despite escalating attacks, has led to a ‘Value Crisis'. This thesis aims to understand this phenomenon through a multidisciplinary approach, combining a socio-legal analysis of enforcement mechanisms with EU Studies theory of ‘usages of Europe’. Furthermore, it aims at applying the observation of academia to cases of potential breaches of EU Values of three countries with vastly different systems (Hungary, the Netherlands and Italy), by observing how the issue was tackled both at the national and EU-level, and how the broad concept of European values has been mobilised in each instance. The final objective is to determine how politics and the law affect one another on this issue and how they interconnect.