The European Commission’s exhaustive annual audit of democratic standards across the bloc is overly positive and ultimately ineffective because it is not tied to any kind of enforcement mechanism, a leading European civil liberties network has said.

The yearly rule of law reports were launched five years ago and are presented by the commission as a key weapon in its armoury against democratic backsliding, including corruption and attacks on independent media and judiciary, across the union.

But Liberties, an EU-wide network of civil liberties organisations, pointed on Monday to several “significant deficiencies” and said “swift and decisive action” was now essential if the commission was to be able to uphold the rule of law in the bloc.

“The commission’s annual rule of law report is certainly useful for detecting violations – it’s effective as a monitoring exercise,” said Viktor Kazai, Liberties’ rule of law expert. “It has country-specific recommendations; that’s great.”

However, with no direct link to sanctions mechanisms such as a recent law making EU funding conditional on democratic standards or the “nuclear option” article 7 procedure, the report is “completely ineffective as an enforcement tool”, Kazai said.

Issued in July, this year’s report – which was particularly critical of declining media freedoms in Italy – was reportedly delayed by Ursula von der Leyen as she sought support from Rome for re-election as president of the bloc’s executive.

The commission has since insisted publication was not delayed as part of any effort to curry favour with Giorgia Meloni’s government. Von der Leyen was successfully elected to a second term later in July.

In its ‘Gap Analysis’, shared with the Guardian before publication, Liberties said that while it welcomed the commission’s “commitment to prioritising the rule of law”, its “triumphant rhetoric” on the scale of the problem was unjustified.

With von der Leyen’s second commission due to take office by the end of the year, Liberties said “significant improvement is needed urgently” in the executive’s strategy to tackle democratic backsliding across several member states.

The EU’s executive paints “too rosy a picture” of the actual progress and impact of its recommendations, Liberties alleged, noting that the commission’s 2024 report claims 68% of its 2023 rule of law recommendations were implemented by member states.

In fact, the group said, many of these reforms had already been announced by capitals, or were allegedly under way but incomplete and not yet evaluated, meaning it would be truer to say only 19% of 2023 recommendations were implemented.

Implementation in some countries is a huge problem, Liberties said, noting that in those where the rule of law is in decline, such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Malta, Poland and Romania, EU recommendations were “completely or partly disregarded” in 2023.

Some mature democracies also “refuse or make only minimal efforts to comply”, it said. “Austria, France and Germany really should be implementing the commission’s recommendations,” Kazai said. “The fact that they don’t encourages others [not to].”

Plus, he said, “the commission tends to see progress where there isn’t any, or when it simply hasn’t been measured”.

Liberties said that to be genuinely effective, the commission’s report must be fully incorporated into the EU rule of law toolkit, with insufficient implementation of the commission’s recommendations rapidly triggering enforcement actions.

There are some signs that the commission is listening to criticism, Kazai said, with the mission letter of the new justice commissioner referencing closer ties between the report and enforcement mechanisms. But Kazai also said more was needed.

“The rule of law is being systematically dismantled by some governments and the next commission must do better,” he said. “It’s 14 years since the rule of law crisis began. We can’t wait – what has happened in Hungary can’t happen in Slovakia.”