Illiberal trends are on the rise. Their influence is reflected in campaigns for national and European elections. Illiberalism proposes majoritarian, nation-centric or sovereignist solutions. This roundtable seeks to understand which institutions can support social and political mobilisation against illiberalism. We focus in particular on the role of courts as fora for contesting illiberal reforms as well as the role of the European Union in safeguarding liberal democratic values, such as rights of minorities, protection of the common goods and equality before the law. The panelists are experts on the legal and political developments in the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and Hungary as well as the European Union.
Marlene Wind – Marlene Wind is a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen, where she has been Director of the Center for European Policy. She has also held professorships at the iCourts Center at the University of Copenhagen and in the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo.
Marlene has, amongst others, been awarded with the European Woman’s Prize, The Columbus Prize and the Tøger Seidenfaden Prize. She is a very active participant in the public debate in Denmark and beyond and has for the past 20 years been a regular columnist at various Danish newspapers. She is currently advising the European Commission on rule-of-law issues.
Leonard Besselink – Leonard Besselink held the chair of Constitutional Law in the Faculty Law from 2012 to 2022, and is affilliated to the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance, ACELG. Although emeritus since September 2021, he still teaches and is engaged in research. Since 2021 he teaches at the School of Law of LUISS Guido Carli in Rome, where he has also been teaching in the School of Government since 2015. He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Society of Sciences and Humanities. He obtained a doctorate in social and political sciences at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
His research focuses on issues of European, comparative and national constitutional law. In particular the constitutional nexus between EU and national constitutional law is one of his main research themes as well as issues of fundamental rights protection in Europe.
Pola Cebulak – Pola is an Assistant Professor in European Law at the Transnational Legal Studies Department of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She holds the JUDILL Jean Monnet Chair on Judges vs Illiberalism: Legal Mobilisation for the Rule of Law. Her current research focus is on illiberal backlash against international courts and organisations and legal mobilisation in resistance to it. She is a Global Fellow at iCourts, the Centre of Excellence for International Courts at the Faculty of Law in Copenhagen and associated fellow at the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance in Amsterdam.
