22 February 2022
Not looking up
It now seems that after the ruling is before the ruling. The Commission is intent on continuing with its wait-and-see approach, a situation which Hungarian MEP Katalin Cseh compared to the Netflix movie “Don’t look up”, in which the President of the United States decides to ignore the huge comet approaching the earth. While in the movie the comet finally destroys the planet, the European Parliament, however, is determined not to let it come to that. It has made clear that it will not tolerate this policy of looking the other way and has taken up arms. Continue reading >>
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21 February 2022
Constitutional Identity in and on EU Terms
The EU protects national constitutional identities and does not protect national unconstitutional identities. This is the message the Court of Justice of the EU has sent with its decision of 16 of February 2022, in the cases initiated by Hungary and Poland about the rule-of-law conditionality mechanism, in which it ominously referred to the constitutional identity of the EU. Constitutional identity, according to the CJEU, is a key concept of public law and a fundamental pillar of the EU, so Member States constitutional identities may not be manipulated in such a way that turns into a violation of the constitutional identity of the EU. Continue reading >>
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16 February 2022
No More Excuses
Sitting as a full court, due to the exceptional importance of the case, the Court of Justice has dismissed the annulment actions brought by the Hungarian and Polish governments against the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation. A non-exhaustive account of the main substantive issues addressed by the Court. Continue reading >>
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15 December 2021
Full Steam Back
On 10 December 2021, almost exactly five years after its infamous Identity Decision, the Hungarian Constitutional Court was expected by the Government to declare the ECJ Judgement C-808/08 to be contrary to Hungary’s constitutional identity. But as a big surprise for many, the Court dodged the conflict and avoided to offer arguments against the supremacy of EU law to the Hungarian Government. Unlike Poland, it has only just prevented a full-blown conflict with the EU. Continue reading >>
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05 June 2018
Two Courts, two Languages? The Taricco Saga Ends on a Worrying Note
The epic story of the confrontation between the Italian Constitutional Court (ICC) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that has become known under name Taricco has come to an end at last – somewhat different than expected, but nevertheless. On May 31 the ICC has handed down its final judgment. The hatchet between the Courts is buried. But the way it was done by the ICC is by no means conciliatory. Continue reading >>
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12 December 2017
A Bridge over Troubled Water – a Criminal Lawyers’ Response to Taricco II
The recent CJEU judgment in M.A.S., M.B. (hereinafter Taricco II) [...] Continue reading >>
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07 December 2017
Belittling the Primacy of EU Law in Taricco II
The Taricco II judgement handed down by the CJEU on 5 December 2017 is a telling and worrying example of a weakly reasoned court decision and the high price at which such weakness comes. It is a judgement that disregards legally problematic questions, seemingly subordinating argumentative consistency to the constraints of legal policy in a climate increasingly critical towards EU law and institutions. The (potential) collateral damage of this approach is considerable. Continue reading >>05 December 2017
Defusing the Taricco Bomb through Fostering Constitutional Tolerance: All Roads Lead to Rome
As Mauro Cappelletti perceptively wrote in 1986, ‘unlike the American Supreme Court and the European Constitutional Courts, the Court of Justice has almost no powers that are not ultimately derived from its own prestige, intellectual and moral force of its opinions’. In other terms, the Court of Justice (‘ECJ’) cannot take obedience to its judgments by Member States and the respective authorities as granted or constitutionally-mandated since, in Weiler’s words, this is a voluntary obedience which goes hand in hand with the exercise of constitutional tolerance in the Member States. In other words, there is a time for the enforcement of the radical primacy of EU law as in Melloni and Taricco I, and a time for internalizing the counterlimits, as in the Taricco II decision (M.A.S. and M.B. case) handed down today by the ECJ. Continue reading >>
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08 September 2017
Hungarian Constitutional Identity and the ECJ Decision on Refugee Quota
The outcome of the lawsuit launched by the Hungarian Government against the EU Council’s decision on compulsory relocation of asylum seekers before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) took no-one by surprise, neither in Budapest nor elsewhere. Some may have hoped that the complaint would succeed legally, but nevertheless it has always been primarily a part of a well-devised political strategy based on the idea of national identity as a concept of constitutional and EU law. Continue reading >>02 August 2017