The Tail That Wags the Dog - Reflections on the Principle of Mutual Trust and the Autonomy of EU Law

The Tail That Wags the Dog - Reflections on the Principle of Mutual Trust and the Autonomy of EU Law Spaventa, Eleanor Author aut Text xx# 2024 Verfassungsblog 2024-11-05 eng In Opinion 2/13 the Court of Justice held that accession to the ECHR must not interfere with the operation of the principle of mutual trust as this would affect the autonomy of EU law. I offer a different reading: mutual trust is not a general principle capable of having autonomous legal effects. Furthermore, mutual trust is acquiring a novel value for the progressive operationalisation of the foundational values ex Article 2 TEU. Read in this way, it has then the potential to enhance fundamental rights protection and is certainly no bar to accession to the ECHR – it is the dog of core values that wags the tail of mutual trust and not vice versa. CC BY-SA 4.0 Spaventa, Eleanor Autonomy of EU Law ECHR EU EU accession mutual trust EU 342 https://verfassungsblog.de/the-tail-that-wags-the-dog/ Verfassungsblog 2366-7044 Max Steinbeis Verfassungsblog gGmbH 10.59704/3d0472b7a5ee6460 241105 10.59704/3d0472b7a5ee6460 Converted from MARCXML to MODS version 3.7 using MARC21slim2MODS3-7.xsl (Revision 1.140 20200717)