The Court of Justice and EU secondary legislation: How can Court’s rulings influence decision-making ?

Abstract

Does the Court of Justice of the European Union have a significant influence over European secondary legislation? Existing research struggles to determine whether the Court is actually able to push for its own political agenda through its audacious rulings, or whether the decisions only have an impact when they are supported by the majority of European member states. Research on the topic is not yet fully developed. Most studies tend to focus on a single or very few cases analyses. They analyse the impact of the CJEU on specific fields of law, however, no overall theory exists on the potential influence of the Court over EU law. This thesis will attempt to establish through what mechanism a Court’s decision can be codified in the secondary legislation. Hence, this research will be studying the overall mechanism of codification and presupposed underlying mechanisms. Codification is defined as the integration of Court’s interpretations in an EU policy output and is used as an indicator of influence. Beginning with the assumption that Court has a definitive impact, this study tests the theoretical framework with a two case analyses. It tests the theoretical framework with two case analyses. The first case concerns the legal framework on direct injection transmissions technique for radio and TV broadcast protected content. The second case concerns the scope of application of personal data protection. Through this analysis, an assessment can be made that the Court’s influence is dependent on several conditional variables, in particular, the Commission’s will to launch a legislative proposal, and the European Parliament’s need to strengthen its position in negotiations with the Council. However, other contextual variables also exist that are less influential on the result. To conclude, the Court can influence EU secondary legislations, to the condition that European legislators have an interest in its codification.