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IN OR OUT? Poland, already brawling with the EU’s top court, on Thursday started mulling whether to pick a fight with the European Court of Human Rights next (more here). And thus, the government again highlighted a special EU insider/outsider problem: It’s safe to say that neither Hungary nor Poland would be admitted to the EU were they to apply now, given the shape of their institutions, checks and balances.
New tools: The EU looks closely and thoroughly at those it admits into what is a legal community (and at the moment, it is refusing to start doing even that with the next batch of candidate countries). The fact it would remain a legal community even in the event it became a single-market-only Union is a no-brainer. But how Brussels can discipline those who have made it into the club for deviations from its minimum standard is an unresolved question — the EU has invented various procedures to protect the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary in its member countries, with mixed success.