The rule of law crisis is one of the most formidable challenges the European Union has faced during the last decade, with the core problem of systematic attacks on judiciary. Attempts of the European Union to solve the crisis seem inefficient, which is especially true for European Commission's response. The latter spent too much time engaging in dialog with problematic member states, whose political elites purposefully turned away from rule of law values and used law simply as a tool to entrench power. European Commission's faith in dialog thus only emboldened troublesome member states and enabled them to pass controversial judicial reforms and capture independent judicial bodies. European Commission was equally ineffective in bringing infringement cases against member states as it was too often satisfied with a formal victory in front of the Court of Justice. The latter therefore took a preliminary question from a Portuguese court in the case C-64/16 - Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses and used it to highlight the role of national judges as European judges as well as their importance for the legal order of the European Union. With this crucial ruling the Court of Justice gave the European Commission appropriate weaponry to combat rule of law crisis in individual member states, while offering additional protection to the national judges. On the basis of the aforementioned ruling the European Commission was able to bring several infringement actions against Poland which forced the latter to abandon some of its controversial judicial reforms. However, European Union’s institutions cannot solve the rule of law crisis on their own. The most important step must be made by citizens of problematic member states. They have to express their wish for rule of law adherence in the next elections.
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