Maciej Krogel is originally from Lower Silesia, a Polish region with an exceptionally complex and interesting history. He graduated in law from the University of Wrocław, and previously studied at Radboud University in Nijmegen and at Ghent University. After briefly working in a legal practice, he started his PhD research at the European University Institute with the thesis, The Intellectual Sources of the European Union's Response to the Rule of Law Crisis in the Member States. At the beginning of his research, he decided that he wanted to connect his interest in constitutional law and theory with a broader specialisation in European Union law.
A couple of years ago, legal scholars and lawyers had begun to pay much attention to the rule of law and democracy backsliding in some of the Member States of the EU, in particular Hungary and Poland. Many academics and policymakers have proposed various instruments that the EU could use to enforce its values in the most effective and democratically legitimate way. However, in Maciej’s opinion, what was still lacking was a systematic, critical theory of how the EU’s treatment of the so-called rule of law crisis should be understood in the light of the EU constitutional heritage. Therefore, he decided that in his research he would not try to design immediate solutions to the crisis, but he would rather take a step back, to uncover and reflect on how EU constitutional concepts and ideas have informed the existing EU’s policy and legislation in the area of the rule of law.
Maciej analysed the EU’s responses to the crisis in relation to the three broader discourses in EU constitutional law: on constitutional pluralism, constitutional change, and membership in the Union. As regards to constitutional pluralism, he showed how concrete shifts and choices within the pluralist discourse have conditioned the recent interpretations of the relations between the EU and its Member States. In the case of constitutional change, he examined the links between the two moments of introducing conditionality into the EU constitutional order: during the Eurozone crisis and during the rule of law crisis. For the theme of membership, Maciej analysed the origins and limitations of the recent debates about the potential expulsion of Member States violating EU common values.
Maciej believes that his research findings may contribute to the knowledge of how the evolution of constitutional discourses condition the way in which EU institutions respond to the systemic crises that the Union faces. He also wants to broaden the understanding of how concrete constitutional ideas and concepts circulate among the various actors (Court of Justice and its President, European Commission, legal scholars, policymakers) who reinterpret them for the purpose of addressing the crises.
The issue that was most inspiring in choosing this particular topic was the evolution of legal academia, and actually the historic role of the EUI. As a legal scholar, he feels under increasing pressure to quickly react to the ongoing political and social challenges and to find concrete recommendations for improvement. However, it is a well-known fact that the Department of Law of the EUI has influenced the more profound processes in EU law, as well as EU constitutional theory. Maciej has become interested in linking the recent responses to the rule of law predicament to the more general and older debates in EU law and politics.
Looking at the future, Maciej plans to turn his PhD dissertation into a monograph. He also wants to expand his research interests into the more general questions of what shapes the EU’s constitutional responses to its various crises. Currently, he works as a Lecturer in European Law at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam. He teaches and supervises in various areas of EU law and takes part in research projects on the rule of law, democratic norms, and European integration.