Recent concerns about the state of health of the rule of law in the EU required the intervention of the European institutions that monitor the correct application of EU law. It was therefore necessary to activate the specific procedure that the Treaties allocate to safeguard the founding values of the Union, listed in Article 2 TEU and which include the rule of law (i.e., the Article 7 TEU). However, at the time of its first and real application, this mechanism proved to be ineffective. To deal with the critical issues inherent in the system established by Article 7 TEU, various instruments have been proposed and/or prepared. This work the analysis of analysing the latter and checking whether there exist new, more effective solutions to protect the rule of law.