Opinion 2/13 of the Court of Justice of the European Union : a façade for a ‘narcissistic’ motif?

Abstract

The immeasurable significance of fundamental human rights is nowadays an open secret, and mankind has moved on from the need to establishing any assertion as regards their irreplaceable contribution to any legal order. Referring to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) as “the crown jewel”1 of the world’s most advanced international system is talk of the past, one would dare say an accepted “dogma’ in a world where the importance of human rights is accentuated and well established. The atmosphere has been revived as the focus has been redefined towards the European Union (EU), no longer viewed as simply a monetary one, signaling a development of a parallel world where the economic concerns are matched by a politically oriented human rights angle, establishing the Union’s own moral status. 2 The discourse shifted to a new level of appraisal, rethinking the steps of the Union and what it can do more to be no less than any of its Member State (MS) counterparts. It was time for different applauses, well deserved to the Union for showering the ECHR3 with “the best gift” for its’ 60th anniversary. The Lisbon Treaty5 has provided the legal basis for accession by the Union to the ECHR, upon which the Draft Accession Agreement6 (DAA) was formulted, giving legal embodiment to such accession. It was a celebrated process, however, Luxembourg rejected the DAA nonetheless. Against this background, the following thesis examines the five reasons submitted by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Opinion 2/137 for its rejection to the DAA. It considers whether the DAA does indeed create difficulties which would render it incompatible with the Treaties8. The study goes into the autonomy discourse put forward by the CJEU matched by its exclusive jurisdiction. As importantly, it examines the procedural mechanisms envisaged by the DAA, more specifically the co-respondent mechanism and the procedure of prior involvement. While additionally examining if accession really does create obstacles in the area of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the present study considers throughout all the analysis conducted whether Opinion 2/13 was rather motivated by the CJEU’s own narcissistic interests above anything else.