Rule of Law and Economic Incentives in the Crisis of Values

The rule of law crisis has resulted in the tripling of rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union and new mechanisms to tackle it. Nevertheless, the above rulings and mechanisms set sights on a particular dimension of the rule of law, namely the independence of the judiciary, despite its protean and multifaceted nature. The fight against the rule of law crisis takes shape in the so-called Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation as well as in techno-managerial mechanisms such as the European Semester, the Recovery and Resilience Facility and the European Structural and Investment Funds. While financial sanctions aim at restoring the rule of law, they have been subject to a series of criticisms; historically financial sanctions are said to follow the outlawry of war proclaimed by the Briand-Kellogg Pact through the maxime "never again declare or take part in war", which brings about a "new legal order". If economic sanctions become the standard way of applying European rules, these would not always be clear-cut as regards the protection of common values.