Strasbourg: The European Commission delivered its annual verdict on the health of democracy this week, and for a handful of member states the diagnosis has barely changed in years.

Published on 15 July, the seventh edition of the report takes stock of judicial independence, media freedom, anti-corruption efforts and the checks and balances that restrain power across the Union. It pairs each country chapter with recommendations, though critics note that too many of those recommendations vanish into the next reporting cycle without consequence.

This year’s assessment singles out a group of persistent offenders. Independent monitors describe five states, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia, as actively eroding the institutions that guard the rule of law, with several showing no improvement on the previous year. The label captures governments moving in the wrong direction rather than merely standing still.

Hungary remains in a category of its own. The Commission and outside watchdogs alike describe a government that keeps pursuing regressive laws and policies with no sign of a change of course, a pattern that has already cost Budapest access to billions in frozen EU funds.

Poland illustrates how hard the damage is to undo. Its government has tried to restore judicial independence dismantled by its predecessor, yet the report keeps the country in a holding pattern, showing how fragile and slow the repair of compromised institutions can be even when the political will exists.

An independent study released alongside the Commission’s work sharpens the picture. Running to more than 800 pages and drawing on 40 human rights organisations across 22 countries, it documents what its authors call a deliberate erosion of the rule of law in the same cluster of states, lending outside weight to the official findings. The Commission presents its report as a tool for dialogue rather than punishment.

That framing is exactly what frustrates campaigners. Press-freedom and civil-society groups argue that annual stock-takes without enforcement let backsliding governments treat the exercise as a box to tick, absorbing criticism while changing nothing on the ground.

The Commission holds firmer instruments, from infringement cases to the budget conditionality that ties funds to respect for the rule of law. Whether it reaches for them, rather than reissuing familiar recommendations, will decide if this year’s report marks a turning point or simply another entry in a lengthening record of concern. A rotating group of member states and members of the European Parliament will now debate the findings, and civil-society groups plan to press for concrete follow-up rather than another round of polite exchanges. The pressure will fall hardest on capitals that have learned to weather criticism while their institutions keep slipping.