Upholding the Rule of Law through Judicial Dialogue

Abstract

The rule of law fundamentally means that, in a given legal order, any dispute is settled in accordance with—and only in accordance with—the applicable legal norms. It is therefore a condition sine qua non for proper justice. It is also among the foundational values of the Union listed in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), which means that—to paraphrase the 1986 judgment in Les Verts1—neither the EU institutions nor the Member States are above EU law.2 I would like first to illustrate the close ties that can be inferred from the recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (the Court) between that value, the effective protection of the rights that EU law confers on individuals, and mutual trust between the Member States (Section I). In Section II, I will then explain how that mutual trust relates to the autonomy of the Union’s legal order and justifies precluding the Member States from concluding international agreements removing any area of EU law from the scope of the preliminary reference procedure. In the third part, I will turn to the rule of law as applied to the EU itself, and will highlight—by reference to recent examples—the Court’s contribution to upholding it in the EU’s external relations (Section III).

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