The Court of Justice of the European Union and mixed agreements : limits of jurisdiction

Abstract

The main subject of the thesis focuses on the concept of jurisdiction and its limits, with special attention put to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The first half of the work delivers the broad theoretical approach concerning types of jurisdictions and the notion of forum shopping. As far as the Court of Justice of the European Union is concerned, not only it describes its jurisdiction ratione personae, ratione materiae, and defines its exclusivity, especially in the dimension of external relations of the EU, but it also presents the possible conflicting or complementary judicial regimes. Thus, the most important stress is given to the problem of overlapping jurisdiction in the context of international relations of the EU and the principle of the autonomy of the EU legal order. The second half of the work is dedicated to the practical example of the mixed agreement -United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea - which has particular effects on the area of the competences of the EU and on the exclusive jurisdiction of the Court. The Swordfish dispute and the MOX Plant dispute, taken as examples, bring relevant input, especially to the case of jurisdictional conflicts in front of mixed agreements. To sum-up, the thesis contributes to the delineation of the jurisdictional competence of the European Court of Justice as a mechanism that functions in very autonomous legal regime of the European Union.