The EU is often held up as an example to the AU of how to curb undemocratic behaviour by its member states, but is now experiencing its own difficulty, says Peter Fabricius.
Johannesburg - The European Union (EU) is often held up as example to the AU of how to curb undemocratic behaviour by its member states.
That comparison is not surprising since the AU was largely modelled on the EU.
But the EU itself is now also experiencing great difficulty in trying to discipline some of its newer ex-Soviet bloc members in the east who are displaying authoritarian tendencies.
The chief offender for the liberal EU is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban who has proudly proclaimed he wants to turn his country into an “illiberal state.”
Orban has defied the EU for slamming the doors on the wave of immigrants flowing into Europe. But he is also alarming Brussels by undermining the independence of Hungary’s central bank and its judiciary.
He accomplished the later by the transparent ruse of reducing the mandatory retirement age of judges from 70 to 62, essentially sacking 274 judges.
In Poland the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) government which took office last October did something similar in December by passing a law to weaken the constitutional court and so reduce legal checks and balances on the government.
On Friday the Venice Commission, an advisory body on democracy for the Council of Europe, was due to release a report which is apparently sharply critical of Warsaw.
Brussels - and many of the older, western EU members - have also criticised PiS laws to tighten the government’s grip over public broadcasting as being inconsistent with EU values.
Brussels has launched official investigations into what it sees as a growing reversal of the fundamental European values of democracy and liberalism in Hungary and Poland.
The European Court of Justice has also ruled against Hungary’s attack on the independence of the judiciary but only on the grounds of age discrimination not authoritarianism which is the real offence.
But such responses by the EU are unlikely to make any real difference to the offending countries, Eszter Zalan says in an article in Foreign Policy’s online journal this week.
She says that due to a lack of legal enforcement mechanisms and political will, the probes have accomplished little. They have only served to highlight “the limits of the EU’s ability to intervene in a country’s constitutional affairs”.
Hungary’s only concession has been to reinstate some of the judges whom it got rid of but not enough to really weaken its grip on the top court.
Zalan says the real problem is the 28 EU member states are far from consensus that the EU’s business includes policing its members’ internal political and constitutional affairs, which are governed by democratically elected governments.
“With skepticism about the concept of a unified Europe on the rise across the continent, the appetite to intervene becomes even lower,” she notes.
To be accepted into the EU in the first place, countries first have to demonstrate their commitment to values such as democracy, human rights, market economics, and rule of law.
Many commentators have lamented that the AU didn’t impose the same conditions on African countries before allowing them to join.
But the trouble is that once countries are in the EU club, there are very few rules to ensure they continue upholding those values.
In Africa those who push for member states to observe the AU’s values of democracy, human rights and rule of law are often accused of seeking “regime change”.
And now, that is emerging as a new refrain in Europe, if not in those same words, Zalan’s article suggests.
The AU might feel encouraged by the EU’s frustrations as it tries itself, half-heartedly and with little success, to curb third-termism and other undemocratic tendencies on the continent.
But there really isn’t much comfort in this for the AU.
Brussels is right to sound the alarm on Hungary and Poland because their undemocratic behaviour is sparking protests which could undermine stability and discourage investment. Nonetheless this behaviour pales in comparison with most of that being perpetrated by AU member states.
And the EU has already created a solid political foundation of democracy and good governance on which it has built a hugely prosperous economy, providing well-being to most of its people, whereas the AU still has a huge democratic deficit to bridge as the basis for economic prosperity.
* The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent