The year 2020 saw one of the historically longest and most difficult EU negotiations regarding the Multiannual Financial Framework as well as New Generation EU financial stimulus package. One of the most controversial topics in the negotiations was the implementation of rule of law conditionality mechanism to the two financial packages.This thesis analyses the political rhetoric of the EU formal leadership on the topic of rule of law conditionality in the EU negotiations during the second half of 2020. The analysis conducted in thesis focuses on the individual utterings of 9 different politicians, heads of Member States as well as heads of the supranational institutions of the EU. Drawing from actor-based constructivist framework this thesis claims that the actors construct the EU institutional negotiation environment and are themselves constructed by it. Furthermore, the behaviour (rhetoric) in the negotiations is constructed by the environment as well as the background; interests, positions, norms and views, of the actors. The analysis of the rhetoric was combined with analytical toolbox of integrative and distributive negotiation strategies used in international negotiation research, to reveal attitudes towards the rule of law conditionality negotiations. Combining the revelations in the rhetoric with the actors’ background, it could be observed that those actors, who had no tools or little to no interest to either block or ensure the implementation of rule of law conditionality, or had stronger interest in other aspects, tend to have integrative rhetoric. On the other end, those who had tools, had a stronger interest to implement the rule of law conditionality or had a strong interest to block the rule of law conditionality used more distributive rhetoric.