Focus of the literature on the European West, overlooking the marginalised European Central-East – Assumption of all illiberal states equally resisting international courts – Hungary’s unique subtle push-back against the European Court of Human Rights compared to overt resistance against the European Court of Justice – Empirical analysis of original data – Three strategies to control the narrative of compliance – Status signalling to avoid international and domestic political repercussions – Friendly settlements and unilateral declarations as means of avoidance – Disguised non-compliance to convey bona fides – Negative narrative to subvert public opinion – Explaining state behaviour through rationalism and constructivism – Complementing constructivism with the identitarian counterwave in recently-emerged illiberal states – EU membership as a constraint – Illiberalism as fuel for Hungary’s resistance against the Strasbourg Court

2021–2027 Recovery Plan for Europe and its Recovery and Resilience Facility have altered elements of the EU institutional equilibrium – constitutional consistency of the ensuing design – implications for the constitutional evolution of the EU – analysis of the expenditure of the Recovery and Resilience Facility – new fiscal economic stabilisation function – conditionality attached to the funds – strengthened role of the Council – nuanced multi-level financial governance – the fiscal stabilisation function enshrines a potential form of constitutional mutation – the new institutional framework for the expenditure of the EU funds seems to lean towards an intergovernmental preeminence

A discernible rift between the rhetoric of political constitutionalism and the real policy of authoritarian populists – The rhetoric focused on political constitutionalism and popular sovereignty as a façade and a utilitarian argument justifying the introduction of counter-constitutional changes through statute laws – Captured apex courts turned into useful devices of power consolidation – The analysis of the Constitutional Tribunal and the Supreme Court – The Constitutional Tribunal as an ‘inverted court’ used increasingly often to actively shape the government’s Eurosceptic policy – A double face of the Supreme Court – The new Chambers of the Supreme Court introduced to be politically abused by authoritarian populists – Systemic interactions between two captured apex courts have a synergy effect with regard to the process of the denormativisation of the constitution – The deepening politicisation of the apex courts creates a favourable environment for further rule of law deterioration.

Constitutional design – Constitutional degradation – Power sharing – The rule of law – Constitutionalism – Constitution making – Constitutional transition – Divided societies – Role of internal diversity – Bosnia-Herzegovina – Inherent degradation – Dynamic degradation – European Court of Human Rights – Sejdić and Finci – Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina – Compliance issues with court judgments – Repression of the public sphere – Electoral discrimination of national minorities – High Representative – Lack of local ownership

Freedom of expression of judges – ‘Chilling effect’ of measures taken against judges (and prosecutors) – Silence or modification of speech – Rule of law crisis – ‘Chilling effect’ as one of the circumstances determining the proportionality of an interference with freedom of expression – Flexible approach in determining the sources of the ‘chilling effect’ – Little attention devoted by the Court to the quality of legislative enactment – Measures may not have imminent repercussions for a given judge, may be light, and may take the form of a threat – ‘Chilling effect’ may extend from one legal profession to another – ‘Chilling effect’ explains why the Court affords greater protection of freedom of expression to prominent judges – Greater consistency in the Court’s application of the ‘chilling effect’ argument would be welcome – First step of an ambitious research quest to determine whether judges feel free to express their opinions, or live in a state of feardom.

Enforcement and conceptualisation of Article 2 TEU values – Rule of law – A non-regression principle for EU values faces significant pitfalls – Limits of the ‘backsliding’ paradigm informing doctrinal developments under Article 2 TEU – Inadequacy of a progress/regression trajectory as a lens for constitutional developments – Complexity of Article 2 values threatens to render regression assessments simplistic – Non-regression and the equality of member states – Potential conflicts between non-regression and minimum standards as tests for Article 2 compliance

Judicial independence as a European constitutional principle – Freedom of expression of judges in connection with judicial independence – Rule of law backsliding – Catalan secession crisis – Spanish Constitutional Court disqualification doctrine of magistrates – Freedom of expression of judges in favour of the Catalan secessionist movement – Spanish soft law on judicial independence

The United Kingdom Human Rights Act 1998 – Constitutional migration – Impacts of legislative design and process on the internalisation of international standards – A taxonomy of migratory patterns under the Human Rights Act – Constitutional migration as a source of constitutional instability – Proposals for a British Bill of Rights

The German Federal Constitutional Court’s recent case law in context – A systematic account of the Federal Constitutional Court’s changing constitutional imagination – The constitutional footprint of the grand coalitions during Angela Merkel’s 16-year term as German Chancellor – The changing architecture of parliamentary government in the Federal Republic and the role of the Court – The supermajoritarian structure of the German political system – Majority rule and veto players – Legislation and parliamentary oversight – Executive autonomy and parliamentary control – Political representation and counter-representation by the Court – The constitutional nature of cabinet and ministerial responsibility – constitutional limits of political speech in government office – The normative model of administrative constitutionalism – The pouvoir neutre in the German constitution – The constitutionalisation of distributive justice