Nearly 30 years after its formation, the European Union (EU) faces a crisis of values that threatens its identity and shakes its foundations. The values stated in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) are of underlying importance to the Union, they are inherent to its very nature and must be adhered to and protected by its members as such. Unfortunately, this has not been the case lately and violations of Union values by the EU’s own Member States are becoming concerningly common. These worrying developments are intensified by the fact that compliance with foundational values is a pre-condition for new states to join the Union. While it is crucial to ensure foundational values are guaranteed in new members, care must be taken not to demand externally what the Union cannot ensure internally. Through the lenses of the key foundational value of “respect for human rights”, my dissertation sought to analyse the various dimensions of this dilemma with the aim of assessing whether it can truly be said that this value currently holds the proclaimed status of “foundational value”.

I began by analysing the human rights condition of the accession criteria, which mirrors the supposedly fundamental value of “respect for human rights”, and the external/internal discrepancy in its conceptual, scrutiny and enforcement dimensions. I concluded that, presently, the EU combines an active external policy stance with almost an abdication of internal responsibility for human rights abuses in its Member States. Inevitably, these double standards cast doubts on the actual meaning of the accession criteria, a pre-accession instrument which is supposed to represent a set of values all EU states should intrinsically possess but that can, as recent developments show, be easily disregarded once the membership line is crossed.

I then turned to look at what the EU itself has been doing to uphold “respect for human rights” and its foundational status in Member States after accession. The EU institutions, while recognizing the existence of the dilemma the strict application of the Copenhagen Criteria for candidates vs the lack of means to guarantee post-accession compliance creates, have essentially remained passive in addressing it. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) would here be the exception, but one institution alone cannot make up for the absence of concerted action. I explored, here, the question of limited competence, the most invoked explanation for the lack of interference by the EU in internal human rights matters, and the ineffective mechanism to enforce foundational values, article 7 TEU, so difficult to trigger that it was denominated a “nuclear option” by the Commission itself.

Under the title “Where are we now”, Chapter five of my dissertation exposed the ironic state of affairs the abovementioned issues created. There is, in the EU’s present external/internal policies, a discrimination linked to the advancement of human rights, one of which would be the right not to be discriminated against. The irony is self-explanatory. Moreover, I concluded that it is possible, today, to have an applicant state which is more compliant with the “respect for human rights” value present in Article 2 TEU than a Union Member State. In fact, some of the current Member States, if submitted to the human rights hurdle of the Copenhagen Criteria at this point, would fail. Poland is a great example. The record of human rights violations in this country – which goes from violations of the freedom of expression and assembly of activists and protesters, to retrograde restrictive policies on sexual and reproductive rights and even the creation of the famous “LGBTQI+ free zones” – is disastrous and clearly against the standards defended by the Union. Another example would be the protection of the Roma minority, whose situation in many EU Member States is dishearteningly similar to their situation in candidate states pre-efforts due to a regression in the protection of their rights post-accession. This begs the following question: how can the EU allow its members to reach such extreme levels of non-compliance that, if they were to join the EU now, they would not satisfy the entry requirements?

The last part of this chapter dealt with potential solutions to address the flagged problems. Of particular relevance is a new promising principle introduced last year by the CJEU in the case of Repubblika v IL-Prim Ministru, the so-called “non-regression” principle. If evenly and effectively established, this new principle may prove to be an invaluable asset in the protection of the founding values of the Union as it establishes that Member States cannot fall beneath the minimum standard of compliance with the Article 2 TEU values which they reached during the pre-accession phase. While the Repubblika decision was, undoubtedly, a breath of fresh air in the foundational values caselaw, it remains to be seen whether this case has established a strong precedent and whether the “non-regression” principle is an adequate tool to effectively and sufficiently tackle all the deficiencies in question.

The result of the external/internal distinct demands and the apparent incapacity of the Union to safeguard compliance with Article 2 TEU values in its Member States post-accession, seem to lead to the rationale of my argument: that “respect for human rights” is fundamental for accession but becomes secondary upon membership. In a Union that claims to be founded by, among other values, “respect for human rights”, an effective enforcement mechanism that does justice to the “foundational” status these values are supposed to have is vital.

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