EU Regulatory State 3.0 for compliance with values: Poland and Hungary’s responses to the Unions’ comprehensive conditionality regime

The study of risk regulation and the EU’s role as a regulatory state has gained importance over the past decades. While the initial analyses were centred on traditional areas of regulation, such as health, safety, or environmental concerns (1.0), since the 2010s, the EU’s regulatory state has expanded into new domains (2.0), encompassing financial regulation, migration, terrorism and cyber security. If previous regulatory regimes established a border between the economy and the state, we argue that the 3.0 regulatory era aims to stress a border between democracy and non-democracy. In other words, not only has EU regulatory state diversified its functions to include "core state powers", but it has also been accompanied by temporary fiscal capacity, based on a complex and comprehensive conditionality regime. The article discusses a new facet of the EU Regulatory State, labelled as 3.0, which concerns the compliance of EU member states with common values, norms and principles. The evolution of the EU regulatory state is discussed and its articulation with coercive and coordinative Europeanization, with a focus on the generalisation of (rule of law) conditionality as a response to members states’ reluctance to voluntarily comply with the values, norms and principles enshrined in the Treaties. The discussion emphasizes the strengths and limitations of the EU’s comprehensive conditionality regime that has emerged over the last decade, along with its main mechanisms of coercive and coordinative Europeanization. As an illustration of the EU’s regulatory state 3.0 in action, the article focuses on its effectiveness in Poland and Hungary’s responses to European requirements related to judicial independence and the respect of non-discrimination.