In its seventh annual report, the Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) has described the rule of law within the EU as undergoing ‘concerted dismantling and cumulative decline.’ The report cites an acute lack of progress across the bloc in implementing the European Commission’s recommendations designed to reverse this decline, as well as a broader reduction in support for the importance of the rule of law itself. The report concludes that ‘strong action is required by the EU and member states.’

The report assesses the Commission’s own work on the rule of law across the 27 EU Member States – and four countries that are candidates for bloc membership. It highlights that 93 per cent of the Commission’s recommendations in this area from 2025 had already been made in previous years. In assessing 100 specific recommendations from 2025, the analysis found 61 per cent hadn’t been progressed.

The Commission doesn’t agree that implementation of its recommendations is lacking and says its work with Member States is making progress. ‘While challenges remain in some Member States, and in a few cases the situation is serious, the overall engagement with the process remains strong,’ says a spokesperson, who adds that 57 per cent of the 2024 recommendations have been addressed.

The spokesperson says the Commission’s collaborative, dialogue-based approach is paying off, highlighting that its ‘analysis helps to shape national debates and galvanise action,’ and adds that Member States are following up ‘to varying extents […] on more than two-thirds of recommendations made 2022-2024.’

The Liberties report identifies five Member States it calls ‘dismantlers’, who are ‘actively eroding rule of law institutions.’ Based on analysis from 2025, these countries are Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia. Activities seen as ‘dismantling’ include the over-use of fast-track legislation, the harassment of journalists and the undermining of the independence of prosecutors.

In March, Italian voters rejected proposed changes to the country’s judiciary via a constitutional referendum. The reforms would have established a separation between judges and prosecutors within the Italian constitution, which the government said was ‘critical to improving judicial independence.’

Italy has also seen an increased reliance on the use of emergency laws rather than proper parliamentary debate. An example is the Security Decree enacted in 2025, which introduced stronger police powers and extended protest offences to include migrant detention centres. ‘The Decree expands repressive tools against public demonstrations and social protest, creating a very real risk of targeting peaceful dissent,’ says Andrea Oleandri, Co-Executive Director of the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights, which contributed to the Liberties report.

The Italian government did not take up the opportunity to comment when contacted by Global Insight, but Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has argued on social media that the Decree will strengthen the ‘protection of citizens, the most vulnerable and law enforcement personnel.’

Oleandri also highlights tensions between the Italian government and the judiciary. ‘When politically inconvenient judicial decisions are systematically portrayed as political obstacles, this contributes to delegitimising a branch of government that should remain independent,’ he says. ‘If we look at these developments together – pressure on the media, the shrinking civic space, the delegitimisation of intermediary institutions and tensions with the judiciary – we can see a worrying pattern that deserves close monitoring.’

The Liberties report also identifies what it terms ‘sliders,’ countries where democratic standards have declined through neglect rather than deliberate design. These countries include Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Malta and Sweden. Slider countries may not be acting purposefully, says Regitze Rohlfing, Vice-Chair of Nyt Europa, which contributed to the Liberties report, but that doesn’t mean recommendations can be disregarded. ‘What we have seen is that the rule of law and liberal democracy are things that we have to work on constantly. We cannot be complacent,’ she says. ‘When we look at autocratic liberalism, where these elements are dismantled from within, this doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a gradual decline.’

The Liberties report comes at a time when the rule of law and the judiciary are under attack beyond the EU, too. In February, for example, US President Donald Trump strongly criticised a number of the justices on the country’s Supreme Court who had found against his administration’s tariffs. Tahera Mandviwala is a member of the IBA Rule of Law Forum Advisory Board and partner at TDT Legal. ‘The broader political climate associated with the second Trump administration has contributed to a more confrontational discourse towards courts, supranational institutions and liberal constitutional constraints across parts of Europe,’ she says.

There are some positives, however. Hungary’s recent election has ended 16 years of Viktor Orbán’s ‘illiberal democracy’ and it’s anticipated that the country’s new government will reverse some of the detrimental changes to its judicial system, for example. Oleandri says the result of Italy’s recent constitutional referendum, meanwhile, shows that civil society is still capable of influencing public discourse and the choices of citizens. ‘The good news is that Italian democracy still preserves spaces for mobilisation, oversight and institutional resistance,’ he says.

For Oleandri, the real question for Italy – and for all those countries covered by the Liberties report – is ‘how long these democratic safeguards will be able to compensate for a political trend that, in recent years, seems increasingly oriented toward the concentration of power and the weakening of democratic checks and balances.’

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