THE RULE OF LAW REPORT AND CHECKLIST

The Venice Commission (VC) is an expert body working under the auspices of the Council of Europe (CoE) and is engaged in constitutional consulting and standard setting. Its main outputs consist of country-specific opinions and general studies, reports and guidelines. Country-specific opinions are issued only on the initiative of the country at issue or an international body or organisation, such as the various organs of the Council of Europe. The guidelines and opinions of the Venice Commission have played an important role in the rule of law monitoring of the EU.

According to their founding treaties, the rule of law is the third pillar of the value foundation underpinning both the CoE and the EU. The rule of law is invoked in practically all country-specific opinions of the Venice Commission; references to the rule of law are probably even more frequent than to democracy or human rights. The aspects of the rule of law appealed to in VC opinions vary, in the eyes of some observers, perhaps in a confusing way. Consequently, the primary sources for the following reconstruction of the Commission's rule of law doctrine consist of two documents where the rule of law is examined in a comprehensive way: the 2011 ‘Report on the Rule of Law’ (the Report) and the 2016 ‘Rule of Law Checklist’ (the Checklist), arguably the most important and influential soft law document adopted by the Commission. The Report and the Checklist form a continuum, with the Checklist specifying and complementing the groundwork achieved by the Report.