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The Rule of Law Conditionality judgments handed down by the European Court of Justice on 16 February 2022 pave the way for the application of the ‘conditionality mechanism’ and provide the Commission with practical guidelines. While the latter acts as an investigation agency, the Council decides on the activation and range of sanctions. However, in terms of value jurisprudence, the judgments contain much more. The ECJ reformulates federal belonging in the European Union, supplying its legal order with a ‘core identity’, backed by the principle of (unrestricted) primacy. The values’ normativity becomes binding through legal principles which the court traces in other norms of primary law, tying them back to art.2 TEU. Thus, the circle closes: while the Commission and the Council proceed horizontally in a value-protecting manner, the court defines the values’ substance vertically in a conclusive manner. For an identity-framed Verbund with its plurality of actors, this construction raises questions far beyond the mechanism itself.
