EU Leverage and Democratic Backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe: the Case of Romania

Abstract: This article examines the effectiveness of European Union post-accession leverage to contain democratic backsliding in the Member States by employing as a case study the EU's intervention concerning the impeachment of the Romanian President Băsescu in July 2012. It is argued that a set of domestic factors, such as political miscalculations, tensions within the ruling coalition and opportunistic actions, facilitated the success of EU material leverage to halt democratic deterioration in Romania. The comparison drawn with the anti-democratic turn in Hungary demonstrates that facilitating domestic conditions, available in the Romanian case but lacking in the Hungarian one, can affect the exercise of EU post-accession leverage to contain democratic regression in the Member States.