Venice Commission And The Supranational Concept Of The Rule Of Law

Venice Commission And The Supranational Concept Of The Rule Of Law Presented by: Prof. Dr. PETROV Date: 11 – 12 January 2025 The Venice Commission - The Origin, Role And Evolution - The VC was created in 1990 as an international project, which was „doomed to success" in the years of great legal and socio-political changes that came with the fall of the realsocialist bloc. - The VC has developed the concept of European constitutional heritage, which rests on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. - "A specific and unique philosophy" characterizes the practical work of the VC which is based on flexibility and dialogue. It has a specific legal status a kind of "substantial autonomy" in relation to the CoE itself. - The normative basis of the Commission is the Statute of 2002. and two other legal documents: the Rules of Procedure (last amended in March 2023) and Principles of Conduct of 2023. The VC Rule of Law Checklist – “Measuring” The Rule Of Law In Practice - The key challenge became the effective implementation and protection of the rule of law. The first step to be taken was to find an „operational" or „functional" definition. - The VC adopted the Report on the Rule of Law of 2011, then the Rule of Law Checklist in 2016. - The Checklist is not a formula, but an open system of benchmarks that a country satisfies at a specific moment. Those benchmarks are: 1) legality; 2) legal certainty; 3) prevention of abuse (misuse) of powers; 4) equality before the law and nondiscrimination; 5) access to justice; 6) the examples of particular challenges to the rule of law: a) corruption and conflict of interest, b) collection of data and surveillance - The Checklist is an expression of awareness that the rule of law is not indefinable in the proper sense, but that it could be possibly measurable- The VC Opinions - Between Law And Politics - The VC issued country-specific opinions at the invitation of the bodies of the states whose act are being analyzed or on the initiative of the bodies of the CoE and other international organizations. - The opinion is adopted at the plenary session by the votes of the majority of the members, provided that the majority of the members of the Commission are present. However, the rule is that opinions are adopted by consensus. - Urgent opinions - issued in exceptional cases, although the number of such opinions has increased over time, so that they no longer represent an exception in the work of the Commission. Their common denominator is the necessity for the Commission to declare its views and recommendations regarding a text without waiting for the next plenary session. - Follow-up opinions. Whenever there are new developments concerning an adopted opinion, the Secretariat will report to the Plenary Session under the agenda item 'Follow up to previous opinions'. The Statute defines only a variant of follow-up that has crystallized in the work of the Commission it is an opinion on a legal issue in connection with which it has already given earlier opinions. - Interim opinions • When the Commission considers that its assessment of the topic requires further developments. - Formally speaking the Commission is an advisory body and the recommendations expressed in its opinions are just that: recommendations which are not legally binding upon authorities to which they are addressed. - The VC, in fact, „brings technical/legal Argumentation to the political debate", but remains, to the greatest extent possible, outside the „political forum." However, it cannot be said that the VC has consistently managed to stay outside the “political forum”. - “Although its opinions are generally reflected in the adopted legislation, the Commission does not impose its solutions, but adopts a non-directive approach based on dialogue - The opinions are not, or for the most part are not, political documents. They are drafted using legal methodology and legal argumentation - The opinions are neither abstract nor general documents. They will be applied only if the Commission's standards in a certain area (judiciary, constitutional judiciary, elections, etc.) are adapted specific national, socio-political circumstances - Three dimensions of the Commission's impact on the legal order of the country in question - • The first is quantitative, • The second is qualitative, • And the third concerns "follow-up" in the true sense. The basic idea of constitutional law as a „prohibition" for the excessive influence of any, even international, legal or political factor in the constitutional redesign of a nation state, was and remains one of the “guidelines” in the work of the Commission The VC In The Future - The Challenges Of The Rule Of Law - The central question is whether the Commission will and can maintain its professional relevance, referentiality and operability in a world that will, one day, be born" again when cataclysmic attacks on the traditional concept of international legal order and the rule of law go to an end. - The rule of law is facing new challenges everywhere. Those challenges does not recognize the difference between „old" and "new" democracies. So that differentiation would not be a „fertile ground" for the further development of the Commission, in “the complex political context in which -national and international Venice Commission member States now days function”.