Topic: “Authoritarian Bending of Euro-Technocracy Illiberalism's Devil in The Details in Southeast Europe: The Case of North Macedonia”
Description: These series of panels are part of the project “New challenges in the overcoming of ‘democratic backsliding’ in North Macedonia: ‘State capture’ and ‘illiberal democracy’ revisited in an emerging context,” supported by the National Endowment for Democracy.
The project seeks to analyze the public policies and examine the underlying principles in law-making and implementation in terms of their adherence to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, focusing on two issues in particular: the placement of the individual at the center of governing activities (to paraphrase the Charter) and the right to good administration as one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Charter at issue. Full compliance with those aspects shall be fundamental for the national administrative reform agenda and an incremental part of the opening of the EU-accession process. Considering that the newly elected government led by the Social Democrats has prioritized the implementation of the Urgent Reform Priorities (URP) set by the European Commission seeking to hinder the democratic backsliding, we argue that it is time to examine to what extent the allegedly good legislation (but “bad implementation”) adheres to the fundamental principles of the Union. We will focus on the administration and its role of service for the citizens, namely on the issue of the implementation of the IRP in terms of the practice ordinary citizens are faced with on a daily basis. We contend that “the bad implementation” consists in a heavily bureaucratized state apparatus that hinders the right to a good and individual centered administration with no effective means to seek justice and compensation when damaged by the institutions. The “bad implementation” of the allegedly “good laws” is derived from certain tenets of the legislation that betray a self-serving state apparatus, thus rendering the citizen a silent subject to contradictory and costly procedures. The same legislation and the prescribed steps of implementation, present in the laws and bylaws, leave the citizen without juridical and other mechanisms that would help defend individual and collective civic rights vis-à-vis the state.
Join us on Tuesday 02 February at 11:00 AM