Thesis defence The Shadow Court. European Judicial Control over the Masters of the Treaties Add to calendar 2026-10-08 14:30 2026-10-08 16:30 Europe/Rome The Shadow Court. European Judicial Control over the Masters of the Treaties Sala degli Stemmi Villa Salviati - Castle YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Oct 08 2026 14:30 - 16:30 CEST Sala degli Stemmi, Villa Salviati - Castle Organised by Department of Law Marina Chernenko will defend her thesis In a number of relatively recent and high-profile judgments, the Court of Justice of the EU dismissed claims brought by individuals against decisions taken by the Member States by ‘common accord’ in the margins of meetings of the Council or the European Council. Most prominently, it denied jurisdiction over the EU-Turkey Statement on the relocation of refugees and the dismissal of Advocate General Sharpston post-Brexit. The judgments are criticized in the literature for creating rule of law gaps and for failing to take into account the close links between Member States’ collective decisions and the EU legal order. The rulings are also difficult to reconcile with the Court’s famously expansive interpretation of its jurisdiction over acts not obviously subject to (or deliberately carved out from) EU judicial review. The thesis explains this tension by uncovering its historic origins. Using a genealogical approach, it traces the constitutional logic of recent judgments back to the early days of European integration. The thesis proposes a different way of thinking about decisions taken by the Member States by common accord from the perspective of the Court; that is, as belonging to a broader class of norms which are promulgated by the Member States in their capacity as the ‘Masters of the Treaties’. The thesis reconstructs how the Court exercised, from the shadows, a form of constitutional control over such acts even as it explicitly denied jurisdiction over them. This body of judge-made law was principally concerned with forging a space in which the new supranational institutions could function and formulate a will independently of the Masters of the Treaties – a concern that is increasingly out of touch with the ways that public power is exercised by the Member States and the EU institutions at the margins of the EU legal order today.