Date: 2011
Type: Working Paper
The ECJ between the Individual Citizen and the Member States: A plea for a judge-made European law on remedies
Working Paper, EUI LAW, 2011/15
MICKLITZ, Hans-Wolfgang, The ECJ between the Individual Citizen and the Member States: A plea for a judge-made European law on remedies, EUI LAW, 2011/15 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/19494
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
Time and again the ECJ comes under fire, from the Member States who fear the loss of sovereignty, as well as from trade unions and public interest groups who fear the downgrading of ‘The Social’. The overall message then may be condensed into the plea for a court which takes a more cautious stance. I am arguing the exact opposite, at least with regard to remedies in the social and the citizen rights order. Only more judicial activism can overcome the lacunae which results from a rights-remedyprocedure mechanism that is too much designed to enforce economic freedoms.
Table of Contents:
Introduction..........................................................................................................1
I. The ECJ between the individual citizen and the autonomy of the Member States ......................................1
II. RRP in a ‘new’ European legal order having its ‘own’ legal system ................................................2
1. The EU legal order autonomous and/or integrated ...................................................................3
2. Three European legal orders – economic, social and citizen? .......................................................6
3. A rights based order – economic, fundamental, social, human, citizen rights .......................................9
III. RRP – first, second, third... how many generations? ............................................................11
1. The ambiguities of the concept of conferred or attributed competences ............................................11
2. A shaky consensus – the competence divide in RRPs ................................................................13
3. Beyond consensus – the horizontal implications of RRPs ...........................................................15
IV. The institutional framework of judge-made European Law on Remedies ..............................................19
1. The parameters: judicial co-operation, organised law enforcement and legitimacy in RRPs ..........................20
2. Is the concept of subjective rights a Procrustean bed? ...........................................................21
a) Prevalence of EU economic rights over social rights ..............................................................21
b) The missing EU collective rights .................................................................................24
3. Competence (constitutional) boundaries in the development of an EU law on remedies .............................. 26
a) The impact of the distinction between primary vs. secondary EU law on RRPs .......................................27
b) The line between constitutional and non-constitutional RRPs ......................................................29
V. Thoughts on the future for the EU law on remedies de lege lata ...................................................32
1. Constitutional implications: A right to access in the preliminary reference procedure ........................... 33
2. Substantive implications: RRPs to counterbalance the European economic order .................................... 34
a) From uniform application to uniform enforcement ..................................................................34
b) The principle of effectiveness and the doctrine of economic efficiency ...........................................36
c) Materialising the principle of equivalence .......................................................................37
Bibliography ........................................................................................................39
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/19494
ISSN: 1725-6739
Series/Number: EUI LAW; 2011/15
