EU conditions for ensuring rule of law among member states before they can receive financial aid are not strong enough to completely rule out a backsliding in democracy, the 27-nation bloc's auditors said on Wednesday. The European Union has tightened democratic safeguards on payouts from the bloc's shared budget in recent years in a bid to rein in nationalists ruling in Poland and Hungary, widely accused of curtailing freedoms of the media, courts, academics and rights groups. But the European Court of Auditors (ECA) said in a report that these safeguards did not yet "guarantee full protection of the EU's financial interests".