Acceso usuarios
Matej Avbelj
By relying on Protocol No.7 on the Privileges and Immunities of the EU, the European Central Bank has emerged as an unlikely hurdle in the national criminal investigations into the financial malpractices of the banking sector in Ireland, Cyprus and, most recently, in Slovenia. This article examines, for the first time, the scope of privileges and immunities on which the ECB can rely before national criminal authorities. It does so in three steps. First, it offers a best-fit interpretation of the meaning of inviolability of archives, which remains contested in international law and unexamined in EU law scholarship. Secondly, it defines the scope of privileges and immunities the governors of national central banks in their hybrid national/supranational status can enjoy under EU law. This question too has still not been sufficiently addressed, let alone resolved, in either EU legal theory or its practice. Based on this analysis, in a final normative turn the article addresses the ongoing compatibility of Protocol No.7 with the contemporary legal and political nature of the EU. In so doing, it makes an original contribution to the field of privileges and immunities of the EU, which remains underdeveloped in conceptual and practical terms and which, as a result, in the context of the EU economic crisis has started to threaten the objectives of national economic and criminal justice.
