The effects of Constitutional Court Judgments in the context of EU integration: the case of Romania as an EU Member State

Abstract

This contribution analyses the conflict between the Constitutional Court of Romania (the ‘CCR’) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (the ‘CJEU’) from the perspective of the affirmation of constitutional identity by the Constitutional Court of Romania as a national independent court, to the detriment of the principle of primacy of EU law enshrined in the settled case-law of the European Court of Justice. The following analysis focuses on two aspects of this conflict. The first involves consideration of the use of the concept of constitutional identity by the Constitutional Court of Romania as a tool to limit the principle of primacy of EU law, with the main argument being that the Constitutional Court is the supreme national institution the task of which is to ensure the supremacy of the Romanian Constitution on Romanian territory even insofar as concerns EU law and the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The second aspect focused upon in this analysis consists of the effects of the conflict between the two jurisdictions - the constitutional and the European Union – as seen in the constitutional decisions adopted by the Constitutional Court of Romania.