Kim Lane Scheppele (Princeton)
John Morijn (Groningen and Princeton Universities)
March 1, 2024
509 O’Brian Hall, North Campus 
Money for Nothing? Freezing EU Funds to Generate Compliance with EU Values
Since 2010, the European Union has coped with rogue Member States that reject its fundamental values. For more than a decade, the European Commission cajoled, expressed concern and occasionally brought infringement actions, but made little difference. Finally, the EU passed a set of regulations with the new EU budget cycle that explicitly permit the Union to freeze funds to Member States that do not honour EU values. In 2022, the EU then froze all non-agricultural funds to Hungary and Poland.  But did these funds freezes restore EU values? The results are mixed.

Poland’s 2023 election, run centrally on Poland’s place in the EU, brought a pro-EU coalition to power pledging to restore rule of law to Poland. Hungary’s government passed a flurry of laws that appeared to, but did not, fix the problems that the EU institutions had identified. More than any other mechanism that the EU has tried, however, the funding freezes spurred action and moved rogue states’ publics to criticize their own governments. As we write, however, there are worrisome signs that the EU will cave into pressure from the rogue states before the benefits of budgetary conditionality have been realized.  

Kim Lane Scheppele is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. She is also a faculty fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her primary field is the sociology of law and she specializes in ethnographic and archival research on courts and public institutions. Scheppele also works in sociological theory, comparative/historical sociology, political sociology, sociology of knowledge and human rights. 

John Morijn, University of Groningen, Professor of law and politics in international relations was recently appointed Fellow in Law and Public Policy at Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He engages in research and teaching in the fields of rule of law protection and democracy, European human rights law, EU Charter of Fundamental Right); international human rights law; and, human rights protection in The Netherlands Morijn currently holds a chair endowed by the Netherlands Association for International Affairs (NGIZ), and is a member of the Dutch Advisory Council on Migration and the Scientific Committee of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. Morijn serves as a reserve officer in the rule of law platoon in the Royal Dutch Army. At the University of Groningen, he is the founding mentor of "Our Rule of Law", a for-students-by-students initiative that creates opportunities for students to learn about democracy and rule of law protection in Europe.