Which Rule of Law for the External Borders of the European Union? Agencies, Institutions, and the Complex Upholding of the Rule of Law at the EU’s External Borders

This Article expands the rule of law crisis narrative to the EU administrative layer. It starts by introducing the context where the agencies have developed; it continues with an operationalization of the rule of law for agencies; in the next section, it places the evolution of the agencies against the background of the low-intensity constitutionalism of the EU legal order and its meaning. It unpacks this concept into the right to effective judicial protection, which is assessed in its constitutional potential in the case law on the Hungarian rule of law; it further continues with an assessment of the case law concerning the instruments of the external dimension of migration and border management, focusing on the deference shown by the CJEU. The thesis argued in this Article disputes the idea of the consolidation of a coherent approach toward rule of law issues, especially when migration-related policies are concerned. The Article concludes with a claim that an effort of constitutional coherence is necessary to support the embedding of the agencies into a more robust rule of law framework.