Against Authoritarianism: Can the Court of Justice of the EU rescue democracy in Europe?

Fernanda G. Nicola

American University

Editors’ note – this post is drawn from the author’s upcoming article in the Columbia Journal of European Law, and is published here with the generous permission of the journal. 

Nowadays, both justices in the United States and the European Union are confronting similar challenges from governments that seek to consolidate their powers by undermining basic civil liberties and eroding the rule of law. Yet the political cultures around the courts in the two jurisdictions are sharply different, in ways that enhance the legitimacy of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in its struggle against authoritarian governments, whilst threatening to undermine the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court.  

The judiciaries are increasingly political actors in both cases, since they have the final word on many major social and economic controversies. Today, the extreme politicization of the Supreme Court judicial appointments, the revamped notion of packing the court and the widespread use of dissenting opinions to entrench the conservative versus liberal coalitions has further undermined the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as a politically independent and counter majoritarian institution as conceived in Hamilton’s Federalist 78.  During the electoral battle, the politicization of the replacement of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with the rushed appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the turbulent Senate confirmation hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the legitimacy of the Supreme Court at home and abroad is severely undermined. The replacement of the progressive majority of the Court with a conservative one has already opened the way to attacks against its own Obergefell jurisprudence based on religious liberty, revealing the symptoms of a malaise of an extremely politicized judiciary. 

In contrast to its United States counterpart, tucked away in the fairyland Duchy of Luxembourg, the European Court of Justice is enjoying greater legitimacy in mobilizing a variety of EU interests through litigation. However, not much political attention is paid to how the CJEU is becoming a coalition builder among the different EU institutions that are seeking to work more closely on limiting access to COVID-19 recovery funds to illiberal democracies in the Union and in the implementation of EU values. In a Union where autocratic legalism is well-entrenched, the CJEU is perceived as an additional safeguard to fight against the autocrats. Founded in 1952, the European Court of Justice began its working with seven judges based in Luxembourg. Today, the CJEU is composed of twenty-seven judges, each nominated by one Member State and after consultation with an independent panel of experts (TFEU 255), for a renewable term of six years.  

The CJEU constitutes the highest constitutional and supranational Court in the Union tasked with the observance and uniform interpretation of EU law. The Court speaks in unison and its precedents are binding, especially when deliberations happen in its Grand chambers, constituted by fifteen judges rather than smaller chambers of three or five judges. Dissenting and concurring opinions do not exist and to an extent these are replaced by the opinions of the Advocates General who serve as legal advisors to the Court. The court lacks the cult of personality that has pervaded the U.S. Supreme Court and the diva-like quality of some of its Supreme Court justices. There are only a few biographies of the EU judges and advocates general and, with the exception of its current President Koen Leanerts, these jurists sit for relatively short terms and only occasionally make the news. What has long been criticized for its formalist, opaque, technical and indirect style of its jurisprudence, the European Court of Justice, shows today how to survive both the attacks by autocrats and the over-politicization of judicial appointments that are undermining the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

On October 6, 2020, in Commission v. Hungary C-66/18, the Grand Chamber of the CJEU, fifteen judges in plenary sessions speaking in unison, held that the Hungarian law that singled out and forced the Central European University (CEU – an academic institution located in the U.S.) to relocate from Budapest to Vienna violated EU law. This ruling comes at an important time to assess the violation of EU values by autocrats and limit their access to the Union’s funds. It also follows the gradualist jurisprudence of the CJEU against the Hungarian restrictions against civil society organizations and in seeking to protect the Polish judiciary from political control. Albeit with limited effects, these rulings show how the CJEU has exercised its gradual legal diplomacy in walking the fine line between law and politics.  

If the CJEU judgement is a modest blow against the Hungarian government of Vicktor Orbán, who has transformed its country into an illiberal democracy, it is also demonstrates the powerless of the Union vis à vis the autocrats. Back in 2018, the European Parliament reached a similar conclusion, voting to move forward on a preventive procedure enshrined in Art 7(1) of the Treaty of the European Union in case of “clear risk of a serious breach of the Union’s value” against Orbán’s government. Almost a year before in 2017, the Commission launched the same Article 7(1) TEU procedure against Poland due to a clear risk of a serious breach of the rule of law in adopting thirteen laws affecting the judicial independence of the Polish judiciary including its Constitutional Tribunal. In June 2019, in Commission v. Poland, the CJEU held that the “New Law” which lowered the retirement age for judges on the Polish Supreme Court was invalid and violated Article 19(1) TEU’s requirements for judicial independence and irremovability. In November 2020, in Commission v. Poland, the CJEU held that Poland had a duty to ensure the protection of judicial independence under EU law. Through its gradual jurisprudence, the CJEU specifically pointed to the principles of independent judiciaries and the irremovability of judges as central to the EU Treaty by holding that procedural rules governing the principle of irremovability of judges and its exceptions were not followed in the case of ordinary Polish courts.  

These rulings did not happen overnight, rather the CJEU has worked slowly and in synergy with the Union’s institutions to deliver its rulings that constitute the legal diplomacy of the CJEU. Nor did these rulings prevent the Polish constitutional breakdowns. Even if such jurisprudence is a step in the right direction, the CJEU legal diplomacy cannot solve Europe’s authoritarian problem by itself, but can work in synergy with domestic courts and with other branches of government in order to entrench a rule of law culture. 

Fernanda G. Nicola is a Professor of Law at Washington College of Law, American University

Suggested citation: Fernanda G. Nicola, “Against Authoritarianism: Can the Court of Justice of the EU rescue democracy in Europe?” IACL-AIDC Blog (2 February 2021) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/2021-posts/2021/2/2/against-authoritarianism-can-the-court-of-justice-of-the-eu-rescue-democracy-in-europe.