Abstract
Two different dynamics govern the autonomy of the European Union (EU) legal order. On the one hand, autonomy seeks to define what EU law is not, i.e. it is not ordinary international law. Positively, on the other, autonomy seeks to define what EU law is, i.e. a legal order that has the capacity to operate as a self-referential system of norms that is both coherent and complete. Yet the concept of autonomy of the EU legal order in no way conveys the message that the EU and its law are euro-centric and that the Court of Justice of the European Union (the ‘Court of Justice’) seeks to insulate EU law from external influences by building walls that prevent the migration of legal ideas. Autonomy rather enables the Court of Justice to strike the right balance between the need to preserve the values on which the EU is founded and openness to other legal orders. The autonomy of the EU legal order is thus part of the very DNA of that legal order as it allows the EU to find its own constitutional space whilst interacting in a cooperative way with its Member States and the wider world.
Highlights
Two different dynamics govern the autonomy of the European Union (EU) legal order
On the other, autonomy seeks to define what EU law is, i. e. a legal order that has the capacity to operate as a self-referential system of norms that is both coherent and complete
The concept of autonomy of the EU legal order in no way conveys the message that the EU and its law are euro-centric and that the Court of Justice of the European Union seeks to insulate EU law from external influences by building walls that prevent the migration of legal ideas
Summary
Neither the Court of Justice nor national courts were to be bound by the meaning given to their own ‘domestic’ law by those tribunals.[78] Those findings explained why CETA did not make any provision for the prior involvement of the Court of Justice that would permit or even oblige the envisaged tribunals to make a reference for a preliminary ruling to that Court.[79] The Court distinguished that disputesettlement mechanism, in particular, from the Unified Patent Litigation System examined in Opinion 1/09.80 As explained above, the draft agreement creating that Unified Patent Litigation System conferred upon an international court external to the EU judicial system jurisdiction to settle disputes involving individuals and to apply in that context, as a matter of law, the constitutionalized setting within which relations between Member States are regulated under EU law’).
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