Georgia and Montenegro top EU candidate countries in rule of law assessment, Resilio Access Study finds

The Institute for European Politics hosted an online meeting on May 13 to present the results of its RESILIO-ACCESS Monitor, an innovative analytical tool designed to assess rule of law resilience and adaptation in European Union candidate countries.

The project focuses on the challenges of building sustainable institutions across ten nations including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and Turkey.

The preliminary findings were presented by a panel of experts featuring John Morijn, Professor of Law and Politics at the University of Groningen, Jorg Albrecht and Maria Skóra from the Institute for European Politics in Berlin, and Misha Popovikj from the Institute for Democracy Societas Civilis.

The RESILIO-ACCESS project evaluates resilience through two dimensions: capability and functioning. Resilience as capability focuses on the conditions that allow a system to withstand pressure without losing core functions, extending beyond formal institutions to include legal culture, active civil society, and independent media.

Resilience as functioning explores how a system responds in practice to specific threats, such as autocratisation attempts by elected leaders. By combining these dimensions, the Monitor identifies structural vulnerabilities and institutional stability based on data from 2014 to 2024, utilizing sources like the World Justice Project, the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice, and Varieties of Democracy.

All variables were normalized on a scale from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating stronger capabilities or higher stressor intensity. The analysis revealed four distinct performance clusters. Turkey was identified as a low-performance outlier in the first cluster. The second cluster included Ukraine and five Western Balkan countries. Moldova occupied the third cluster, while Montenegro and Georgia were placed in the fourth cluster for the highest performance. Experts noted that Georgia and Montenegro aligned most closely with European Union averages regarding the absence of corruption and regulatory enforcement.

While Georgia received a high ranking, experts clarified that this was due to a strong starting position in the 2014 to 2024 data and the system's historical flexibility in avoiding negative effects. However, the experts noted that future evaluations would likely reflect more recent negative shifts.