To act or not to act? A study of Commission inaction against breaches of the rule of law: the case of Spain and the non-renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary

Sammanfattning: In light of the EU’s growing compliance problem and the generalized decline in Commission-led enforcement, this thesis studies the phenomenon of Commission inaction against breaches of EU law, and, specifically, Art. 2 TEU. By focusing on its lack of action against Spain’s non-renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary, a long-standing breach of the rule of law, this thesis aims to shed light on the reasons behind Commission inaction outside of Hungary and Poland’s infringements, the two most studied cases of non-compliance. A theoretical framework that combines Kelemen and Pavone’s theory of supranational forbearance and Emmons and Pavone’s rhetorics of inaction is used to identify patterns of perversity, futility and jeopardy in the Commission’s direct and indirect discourse about the Spanish infringement that justifies its lack of action. Although the qualitative analysis of different Commission discursive interactions found little-to-no-support for the proposed hypotheses, this thesis also discusses other important findings such as how the Commission has increasingly gained an awareness about the severity of the Spanish infringement or how it sees dialogue as the best tool to approach the Spanish national authorities as opposed to Hungary and Poland’s infringement, demonstrating that the Commission acts strategically against Member States’ infringements.