“…2 of the Treaty on the European Union (hereinafter "TEU"), have provided one of the unifying narratives for EU action. The values found their role to play in a multitude of areas, spanning rule of law, protection of human rights, or judicial independence, at the EU level, but their influences also manifested before judicial bodies of the MSs (Blanke and Mangiameli, 2013;di Gregorio, 2019;Schorkopf, 2020). This role has, over the years, manifested itself in a variety of settings as well, including not only relationship between the EU and its MSs, including in areas where the EU does not have competence of its own (Kováčiková and Blažo, 2019, p. 222), but also throughout the process of its enlargement, as part of its accession criteria, 1 and its external relations as well (Mokrá, 2020;Schroeder, 2021;Smilov, 2006), for example in the area of trade agreements through human rights clauses with trade partners of the EU (Bartels, 2014;Mckenzie and Meissner, 2017).…”