Acceso usuarios
Panos Koutrakos
On February 5, 2013, 50 years passed since the ECJ had rendered the judgment in Van Gend en Loos.1 Had it not become ubiquitous and lost its meaning, the word "seminal" would be apt to describe the impact of the judgment on the identity of the Union's legal order. It would also apply to the role of the Court in shaping this identity and its development over the last decades.
Once the foundational phase of the Union's life passed and the main parameters of its constitutional, institutional and policy framework were defined, the role of the Court appeared to become less controversial. This may have been due to its willingness to respond to the evolving political environment and engage with different audiences whose readiness to challenge its authority was apparent.2 However, in recent years a number of judgments have attracted controversy. More recently, the financial crisis and the ensuing existential crisis for the Union have highlighted the role of the Court at the very centre of European integration. Two recent judgments illustrate this with stark clarity.
