When the EU found the political will to act on rule of law

In 2022, the EU changed in more than one way. One of the changes was a decade in the making — standing up for the rule of law.

EU governments are now willing to sanction one of their own over rule of law issues.

In EU jargon, the hard-fought, controversial, and much-awaited 'conditionality mechanism', a new tool which allows the linking of funds to rule of law, survived and proved effective in 2022 — not only in the EU's top court, but in the council of member states as well.