As civil society, media and journalist organisations, we’re greatly committed to the EU’s efforts to champion the rule of law in Europe. In September 2021, we collectively provided advice for strengthening the 2022 rule of law reporting cycle with a joint civil society statement. This followed other efforts to strengthen the process. As the reporting cycle has entered its third edition, we welcome progressive improvements such as the inclusion of country-specific recommendations. These recommendations are key to ensuring follow-up actions to the reports, thereby strengthening their impact and accountability on national-level and EU-wide reforms on the rule of law. To this end, we have come together to issue a set of EU-wide and country-specific recommendations to strengthen the reporting process and make the reports directly enforceable.
Our main recommendations to the Commission are:
- Strengthen the impact of the reports with concrete recommendations, national dialogues and conditionality
- Formalise the consultation and dialogue process to ensure inclusive and meaningful participation of all actors
- Act on the priority recommendations of civil society
