Acceso usuarios
Steffen Hindelang
It seemed that Court of Justice of the European Union wanted to make it short and sweet: it took the Grand Chamber in its Achmea judgment fewer than 15 pages to conclude that investor-state dispute settlement in an intra-EU context is incompatible with EU law. The judgment is noteworthy in terms of both the conceptualisation as well as of the application of the principle of autonomy of EU law. In terms of conceptualisation of the principle, what we witness in Achmea, read in conjunction with another decision, could be a first subtle attempt to enrich the principle with notions of the rule of law. In terms of application, the Court further strengthens legal equality, its judicial monopoly, and—perhaps even more importantly—the role of the Member States’ courts, understood as “traditional permanent State courts”, in the judicial dialogue.
