August 9, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya
August 9, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya

Slovakia Joins The Hard Core Of Europe’s Backsliding States

Viktoria Ottesen
Policy Watch Reporter, EU Budget

Bratislava: For years the conversation about democratic decay in the European Union circled around a familiar short list. A new assessment of the bloc’s rule of law suggests that list is growing, and that the assumption of a stable democratic core insulating the rest is no longer safe.

A wide-ranging civil-liberties report on the state of the rule of law across the Union has placed Slovakia among the countries showing what it calls serious, deliberate erosion, alongside Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary and Italy. Of that group, Slovakia and Bulgaria are singled out as declining across every dimension the assessment measures, from the independence of the courts to the freedom of the press and the space for civil society. The trajectory matters because Slovakia was not long ago held up as a country that had pulled back from the brink; its slide is a warning that backsliding is not a one-way ratchet confined to a couple of perennial offenders.

The report’s most uncomfortable finding concerns the countries usually assumed to be beyond reproach. It records signs of regression even in historically strong democracies, naming Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany and Sweden among states where some indicators have slipped. The deterioration in those cases is of a different order from the deliberate dismantling seen elsewhere, often involving pressure on media independence, the policing of protest, or the squeezing of civic groups rather than the capture of courts. But the pattern undercuts the comforting story that the EU’s troubles are a problem of a few bad governments on its periphery.

Not every signal points downward. The report credits the change of government in Poland with disrupting a long stalemate, noting an action plan on the rule of law, the country’s accession to the European prosecution service, and the beginnings of an effort to unwind structures built during the previous administration’s confrontations with the Commission. Poland’s reversal shows that decline can be arrested when a government chooses to, and that the machinery of accountability still has teeth where there is political will to use them.

The findings feed into a longer argument about whether the Union has the tools, and the nerve, to defend its own foundational values. The Commission has an annual rule-of-law review of its own, a budget mechanism that can in theory withhold funds from offending governments, and the slow, contested Article 7 procedure. Critics say the response has been long on documentation and short on consequence, with the Commission reluctant to escalate against capitals whose votes it needs on other files.

For Slovakia, the immediate stakes are domestic, as judges, journalists and watchdog groups absorb pressure that the report says is intensifying. For the Union, the broader lesson is that rule-of-law decline is no longer a containable exception, and the bloc’s claim to be a community of law rests on its willingness to act, not merely to keep score.

Comments