Political parties have played an ambivalent role in regard to democratic backsliding. On the one hand, the literature has noted how in the EP, the European People's Party (EPP) and (to a lesser extent) the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), backed by some of their constituent domestic parties, have undermined EU efforts by other parties in the EP as well as the European Commission to address democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland (Kelemen, 2017; Kelemen and Pech, 2019; Meijers and van der Veer, 2019; Herman et al, 2021). On the other hand, research has also shown that political parties can exert peer pressure on backsliding parties, and help bring them back into the democratic fold (Sedelmeier, 2014). DI has been viewed by some as having a similarly ambivalent relation to democratic backsliding. We have discussed in Chapter 3 the argument that DI provides backsliding governments with dangerous legal tools to justify their practices. Whereas Daniel Kelemen and Laurent Pech have been strong proponents of this view (Kelemen, 2019; Kelemen and Pech, 2019), we have argued that DI, along with constitutional pluralism, actually supports the values of constitutional democracy under attack by governments engaging in democratic backsliding.

In this chapter, we focus on how political party actors conceive of the EU and DI's role in matters of democratic backsliding, and what factors motivate their views. Complementing our interview material with a survey of 42 party actors (see the questions in Appendix C), we analyse whether they perceive democratic backsliding to be a problematic issue, if they consider DI responsible for it, and how they think the EU should respond to democratic backsliding. The chapter starts by identifying the party political factors that have stood in the way of EU intervention and discussing how they may shape political party actors’ views concerning the relation between the EU, DI, and democratic backsliding. These factors are then explored empirically in the following sections. The conclusion summarizes the findings.

Democratic backsliding and the European Union

Following recent developments in Hungary and Poland, democratic backsliding has emerged as a key concern in European politics. In spite of the issues that democratic backsliding presents for its effectiveness and legitimacy (see Chapter 3), the EU's response has been hesitant, leading scholars to ask why the EU has not intervened more forcefully against backsliding member states (Kelemen, 2017, p 2; Meijers and van der Veer, 2019, p 839). This has led them to highlight the political factors that allow democratic backsliding to go virtually unchallenged.