Worlds Apart? Comparing the Approaches of the European Court of Justice and the EU Legislature to International Law

Author(s):  
Jan Wouters ◽  
Jed Odermatt ◽  
Thomas Ramopoulos
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Martín Rodríguez

The principle of legal certainty and legitimate expectations as a legal tool for individuals in EU law – the mixed nature of EU emergency law: the ‘conferral principle’ limitation and the ways to expand executive powers in the EU response to the crisis (Pringle,ESMA,BPP,OMT) – the existence of legal certainty failures in that response: unpredictable and disjointed legislation and adjudication – arguments blurring legal certainty as the standard of review for EU emergency law: conditionality, international law and indirect legislation – the self-restraint attitude of the European Court of Justice and the risks of leaving litigation under the sole remit of national courts: normalising emergency powers and EU law autonomy at stake


Author(s):  
Kuijper Pieter Jan

This chapter presents a critical analysis of the case law of the European Court of Justice and of the General Court relating to the application of the international law of treaties. It covers the some forty cases in which the Courts have referred explicitly to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1969, and a few more where this happened implicitly, during the period 1998–2010. Inevitably the emphasis falls on the application of the rules of treaty interpretation to the international agreements concluded by the European Union (EU), but also to the founding treaties of the EU itself. The Courts have been confronted with great regularity with questions relating to the law of treaties and thus have become increasingly sophisticated in their use of it. The recent accusation that the Court is adverse to international law seems to be based on a few dramatic cases, not on the steady stream of smaller cases in which the law of treaties plays a role.


2021 ◽  
pp. 421-505
Author(s):  
Jan Wouters ◽  
Frank Hoffmeister ◽  
Geert De Baere ◽  
Thomas Ramopoulos

This chapter deals with the status of international law in the EU legal order under the Lisbon Treaty. It presents in great detail the most important cases of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the incorporation of international agreements and their rank in the domestic legal order. The origins and current practice of the doctrine of direct effect for specific provisions in an international agreement are explained. Moreover, the chapter contains an assessment of the famous ECJ Kadi-jurisprudence on the significance of human rights in the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions on counter-terrorism. Finally, it also shows with concrete examples how the Court of Justice developed the status of customary international law in the EU.


2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 1203-1230
Author(s):  
Sanja Đajić

Fragmentation of international law can be studied from a variety of perspectives and the one chosen for this research is whether and how the conflict of jurisdictions (or other types of conflicts, in terms of interpretation or enforcement) of international judicial and quasi-judicial bodies affect the unity of international law. While the answer might seem to be too obvious to justify the question, it is still not to be too easily assumed. The second issue discussed in this paper is whether and to what extent the external authority of an international court affects the resolution of a conflict. Both issues are too grand for a single paper so the research will be focused solely on three case studies involving the European Court of Justice: Mox Plant, Kadi and Achmea cases. In all three of them the EU Court of Justice clashed with another adjudicative authority and prevailed in the first two but seems to have lost a battle in the third. The article explores the reasons for these outcomes relying inter alia on the concept of external authority of a judicial institution. These findings are coupled with discussion on how these outcomes can be assessed from the perspective of (de)fragmentation of international law.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Riffel

Abstract In Opinion 1/17, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) found the investment court system compatible with European Union (EU) law. The ruling concerned the mechanism in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) but the Court’s reasoning is equally applicable to other investment courts as established, for example, in the EU’s investment protection agreements with Singapore and Vietnam. This outcome was far from clear, given that in the past the accession to international dispute settlement bodies regularly foundered on the autonomy of the EU legal order. The present article parses the CETA Opinion and explores its implications. It particularly focuses on autonomy as a constitutional principle and its advancement in Opinion 1/17. Importantly, the ECJ accepted the superiority of a court created by international agreement in relation to the said agreement. Furthermore, it clarified that it is not prerequisite for the Court to rule first on the meaning to be given to an act of EU law before that act can be the subject matter of an investment dispute. Finally, the pdrerogative of the EU to autonomously set the level of protection of a public welfare goal must be secured in a treaty for the EU to join it.


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