The Principle of Mutual Trust in EU Law and Policy

Abstract

Mutual trust is one of the central principles of the area of freedom, security and justice and the whole EU. Despite the fact, that mutual trust is not stipulated in founding treaties, this principle has been widely developed by the European Court of Justice. The purpose of this article is to identify the legal and political components of mutual trust in the EU, as well as the approaches to its implementation. The author comes to the conclusion that the principle of mutual trust originated from the internal market, however its development is mostly associated with the area of freedom, security and justice. Mutual trust in the EU presupposes that a member state does not need additional verification that another member state respects Union law and fundamental rights. Initially, the principle of mutual trust was given the absolute character, but in the post-Lisbon period, “blind trust” was replaced by the “earned trust”, which implies the possibility, in exceptional cases, to refuse mutual trust to another member state if the latter violates fundamental rights. Despite the development of the concept of mutual trust by the European Court of Justice and other EU institutions, recently there has been a serious deficit of interstate trust within the Union. In this regard, the principle of mutual trust is becoming declarative.