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Lenaerts, Koen --- "The Court of Justice as the guarantor of the rule of law within the European Union" [2015] ELECD 1454; in De Baere, Geert; Wouters, Jan (eds), "The Contribution of International and Supranational Courts to the Rule of Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) 242

Book Title: The Contribution of International and Supranational Courts to the Rule of Law

Editor(s): De Baere, Geert; Wouters, Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783476619

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: The Court of Justice as the guarantor of the rule of law within the European Union

Author(s): Lenaerts, Koen

Number of pages: 23

Abstract/Description:

In accordance with Article 19 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), the European Court of Justice (the ECJ) ‘shall ensure that in the interpretation and application of the Treaties the law is observed’. It follows that all EU acts must be interpreted so as to guarantee that ‘the European Union is based on the rule of law’. However, as Koopmans notes, the original version of the EEC Treaty told ‘us nothing about its substantive principles’. It thus provided little guidance as to the content of the ‘law’ to be observed. Nonetheless, in the aftermath of World War II, legitimacy could not be based upon a formalistic conception of the rule of law. In order to reassure the Member States, the EU (or Community as it then was) legal order needed to embrace a particular conception of public morality reflecting both the universal values shared by mankind and, more specifically, the basic values of European liberal democracies. With a view to accomplishing this mission, the ECJ had to create new norms that would supplement and complete the legal order established by the Treaty, aligning it with both public international law and the fundamental constitutional tenets common to its Member States. Ever since the landmark decision in van Gend en Loos,the ECJ has consistently held that the Union is a distinct and autonomous legal order. Yet autonomy could hardly be achieved by a legal system that was not both self-sufficient and coherent.