

從歐盟會員國憲政危機檢討哥本哈根政治標準執行上之缺失
193
Member States’ Constitutional Crises and
Deficiencies in EU’s Implementation of
the Copenhagen Political Criteria
Yung-Djong Shaw
Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica
No. 128, Sec. 2, Academia Rd., Taipei 11529, Taiwan
E-mail:
yungdjongshaw@gate.sinica.edu.twAbstract
Accession negotiations have contributed significantly to the Euro-
peanization of democracy, the rule of law, human rights and economic
models in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. However, re-
cent constitutional crises in Central and Eastern European countries
demonstrate that the Copenhagen Criteria have failed to ensure that all
candidate states have reached the required degree of stability in their
constitutional systems before accession. Why did the EU fail to screen
out those applicants that as yet lacked sufficiently strong democratic
institutions, despite the great efforts made during the screening process?
By clarifying the interaction between the EU value order and the con-
stitutional orders of the Member States, revisiting the evolution of the
EU value-protecting mechanism, and analyzing the socio-political and
economic factors behind the constitutional crises in Hungary and Po-
land, this paper argues that the overhasty pace of the accession negoti-
ations, and the fact that the current value-protecting mechanism was
unable to sufficiently empower civil society in the candidate states, are
important reasons for the weakness of the current mechanism.
Key Words
:
Copenhagen Criteria, constitutional crisis, EU democracy,
rule of law in the EU, EU human rights