This event is organised by the European Union Law Working Group and features a talk by Ana Bobić (Hertie School).
This presentation will introduce the premises, questions, and hypotheses of the research project on judicial conflicts over control in EU criminal law. While we know that judicial conflict is a standard attribute of the EU’s constitutional setup, we know less about how such conflict reconfigures the EU under conditions of high national regulatory diversity.
The premise of the project is that the Court of Justice may be seen as the governor who needs national courts to act as intermediaries in enforcing EU law. The Court of Justice controls national courts in carrying out this task through the preliminary reference procedure and authoritative interpretations of EU law. For the Court of Justice, national courts are perfect intermediaries based on their expertise, their legitimacy, and their operational capacity. In this constellation, the Court of Justice is faced with what IR theory calls the governor’s dilemma: too much control risks undermining the capacity of national courts to ensure the enforcement of EU law. But too little control is also a risk: national courts may increasingly start pursuing their own objectives, rather than the Court’s.
The governor’s dilemma is particularly acute in criminal law. Traditionally a core state power, criminal law is witnessing a slow but steady rise of the EU’s regulatory capacities. Mutual recognition in criminal matters became problematic for fundamental rights protection and mutual trust. This resulted in further EU regulation of the criminal procedure, and increasingly, of substantive criminal law, with the Court of Justice assuming its role as the governor and using national courts for enforcement.
Given the high path-dependency of criminal law and the diverse traditions of procedural and substantive criminal law across Member States, national courts are particularly active in contesting the Court of Justice’s control. Yet, this contestation manifests itself in different ways. Criminal law is thus a particularly salient area for studying the trade-offs of the governor’s dilemma: it is of great relevance for the EU as a whole, but deeply embedded in national legal traditions.
To answer the research question, this project will conceptualise the varieties of criminal law across the Member States and analyse the different ways in which national courts contest the control by the Court of Justice in criminal law, thereby reconfiguring the EU’s constitutional space.
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You are also warmly invited to attend the presentation by Ana Bobic and Josephine van Zeben Belonging in the European Union, to be held on 11 June 2025, from 11:00 to 12:00 CEST, in Sala del Camino, Villa Salviati, and online.
Their presentation will explore the problematic competition between the EU and its Member States over ownership of a yet-to-be-fully-realised European sociopolitical space. They will start by considering some key normative questions regarding belonging, which they aim to conceptualise as the necessary connection between the EU and all individuals within its territory, regardless of nationality. By taking a socio-legal approach, they then consider two areas of law that are currently legally and socially divisive, but hold great potential in building belonging: income tax and environmental protection.
For more information about the event and registration, please see the event page.