Tag Archives: Court: European Court of Justice

Gatestone Institute: Shortly before Christmas the European Court threw out a lawsuit filed almost three years ago, which would have led to the EU being required to release the details of its funding of non-governmental organizations [NGOs].

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The case had acquired worldwide notoriety when the Court of Justice of the European Union, answering a prejudicial question that had been submitted to it by the BGH, found that the existence of a human embryo begins at the moment of conception, and that therefore inventions that involved the use of embryonic stem cells were therefore excluded from patent protection under the EU Biopatent Directive.

AP: How much does it cost to tell the one of the EU’s top officials he has “the charisma of a damp rag?” About (EURO)3,000, or close to $4,000, as a European member of Parliament has discovered.

The Guardian: As the new academic year starts, let’s get back to basics. Which courts decide human rights cases, when, and by what rules?

Religion Clause Blog: In Bundesrepublik Deutschland v Y and Z, (EU Ct. Justice, Sept. 5, 2012), the Court of Justice of the European Union interpreted the EU’s directive on the status of refugees in the case of two Pakistani members of the Ahmadiyya community who are seeking asylum in Germany.  As summarized by the Court’s press release . . .

Irish Times: . The Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice have ruled on the rights of women. Ministers and politicians can no longer prevaricate. They have to decide which takes precedence: canon law or the law of the land.

NY Times: For most Europeans, almost nothing is more prized than their four to six weeks of guaranteed annual vacation leave. But it was not clear just how sacrosanct that time off was until Thursday, when Europe’s highest court ruled that workers who happened to get sick on vacation were legally entitled to take another vacation.

ChicagoTribune.com: “This is a treaty outside of the EU,” British leader David Cameron insisted Tuesday at the House of Commons. “We are not signing it. We are not ratifying it. We are not part of it.” The decision by Cameron and Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas to reject the deal leaves Europe with a clumsy compromise and has thrown up legal questions about using EU-wide institutions like the European Court of Justice to enforce the pact.

The European Union’s top court ruled Tuesday that scientists cannot patent stem cell techniques that use human embryos for research purposes, a ruling some scientists said threatens important research since no one could profit from it.

Europolitics: The president of the EU Court of Justice wants 12 more judges to enable his institution to cope with its increased workload.

“In a precedent-setting move, Europe’s highest court ruled Tuesday that couples in same-sex civil unions deserve the same retirement benefits as those who are married.”

Courthouse News Service: The highest court of the European Union ruled that member states may not jail immigrants who enter their countries illegally and then refuse to leave.

ADNKronos: The EU Court of Justice ruled that jailing migrants contradicts an EU directive whose main objective is “to set up an effective policy to drive out and repatriate third country nationals whose stay (in the EU) is irregular, while respecting their fundamental rights,” the court said in a statement.

The Independent: A fledgling biosciences industry that promises to revolutionise medicine in the 21st century could be destroyed by a French judge who has declared it immoral to patent inventions based on cells derived from human embryos.

Reuters: Research scientists hit out on Wednesday at a European Court of Justice (ECJ) case they say could block development of embryonic stem cell-based therapies in Europe.

UK Human Rights Blog: In an interesting post, Aidan O’Neill QC concludes that the European Court of Human Rights is “in danger of imminent collapse” due to its backlog of 140,000 applications with around 1,600 arriving every month; a conclusion compounded by inherent delays. He suggests that the way to draw back Strasbourg from the brink of judicial Armageddon is to abolish the individual right to petition Strasbourg and to introduce a referral system whereby national courts request Strasbourg’s opinion on human rights issues, akin to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

. . . the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has said that stem cell procedures that require the destruction or modification of a human embryo cannot be patented . . .

C-FAM: The European Union was founded on respect for national sovereignty,” Roger Kiska, Legal Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, told the Friday Fax. “If the Advocate General’s opinion is followed, it destroys this sovereignty making all European nations vulnerable to legislation promoting anti-life and anti-family laws despite the national will of that country. It is not the role of the ECJ to legislate for all of Europe without Europe having a say in the matter,” said Kiska.

Federal Administrative Court of Germany [Google Translation]: “The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, by orders from today in two cases in which this is about the refugee status because of religious persecution, called [on] the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg . . . for a preliminary ruling [concerning] the interpretation of Council Directive 2004/83/EC of the European Union (Qualification Directive). This [includes] the alignment of legal conditions for the granting of refugee status within the European Union. The German legislature . . . implemented the directive in August 2007.”

Christian Concern: “Employment Judge MacMillan held that there was no discrimination on the grounds of religion as Dr Matthews’ belief in the dangers of placing vulnerable children with same sex couples was based on scientific evidence which happened to dovetail with her Christian beliefs . . . MacMillan said Dr Matthews was not discriminated against because anyone who held the same views on homosexual parenting, of whatever religion or none, would have been treated in the same way.” | More from Religion Clause.

Iviola Solanke, Independence and Diversity in the European Court of Justice (January 1, 2009). Columbia Journal of European Law, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 89-121, 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1592457

“The European Court of Justice (ECJ) currently comprises twenty-seven judges and eight Advocates General who together make law affecting citizens of the European Union over a wide range of social and economic issues, including racial and ethnic equality. However, the ECJ’s composition remains unreflective of the millions of black and migrant European Union citizens whom it serves. As the rulings of the Court reach into the everyday lives of an increasing number of people, the need for it to be legitimate in the eyes of all those it serves also rises. Courts derive their legitimacy from both inputs and outputs. A traditional input is independence; a more recent concern is diversity. This Article argues that the current procedure for appointments to the ECJ undermines both of these. The lack of transparency, coupled with the proximity to the national governments, undermines the independence of the members and precludes racial and ethnic minority representation at the Court. To address this problem, I suggest the development of objective eligibility criteria, the use of which, I argue, can promote both diversity and independence in the ECJ.”

TheLocal.se: “The European Court of Justice has told Sweden that it must implement a 2006 measure requiring telecom operators to store information about their customers’ phone calls and emails.”

Andrew Trevor Williams, Taking Values Seriously: Towards a Philosophy of EU Law (November 11, 2009). Warwick School of Law Research. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1504067

“This article argues that the existing philosophy of EU law, such as it may be perceived, is flawed. Through a series of propositions it claims that EU law is infected by an underlying indeterminacy of ideal that has deeply affected the appreciation and realisation of stated values. These values, the most fundamental of which appear in Article 6(1) of the Treaty of European Union, have been applied in a haphazard fashion and without an understanding of normative content. The European Court of Justice has instead adopted a largely pragmatic approach that has focused on principles or virtues of governance rather than attempting to offer a way of satisfactorily defining values or ensuring their realisation. The underlying philosophy thus appears to be based on a theory of interpretation (of original political will) rather than a theory of justice. The recent decision in Kadi paradoxically offers both confirmation of the argument presented but also a judicial appreciation that a new direction may be desirable, one inspired by a law based on the predominance of fundamental values with particular emphasis on respect for fundamental rights.”

EurActiv: “European Union law may allow countries to ban foreign gambling websites if the intention is to prevent criminal offences, the European Court of Justice said yesterday (8 September) in a judgement that goes against previous rulings by the Court and is sure to reverberate through the betting industry.”

I am going to show how the ECJ has reacted to the centrifugal judicial forces which would threaten the interpretive monopoly of the master of treaties. As we will see, the change of the perspective (from that viewpoint of the political sources of law to that of the cultural sources of law) implies a different evaluation of the current phase of EU integration and this factor allows us to overcome (partially at least) the sense of disappointment which seems to characterize the main literature currently.