Of Garbage Cans and Rulings: Judgments of the European Court of Justice in the EU Legislative Process

Abstract

This article addresses the problem of how to explain the influence that rulings of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) have on the political decision-making of the EU. It will be argued that a framework developed by Kingdon which follows the garbage can model of Cohen, March and Olson is a good approach to conceptualising this influence. This framework explains political processes in terms of problems, solutions, participants and choice opportunities. In order to illustrate the argument, two famous rulings, Dassonville and Cassis de Dijon, are examined in detail. Both rulings dealt with the same subject but had different impacts on political decision-making. The difference in influence depended on the conditions of the political arena at the time the rulings were given and not on their legal contents.

Acknowledgements

I thank the two anonymous reviewers for their very useful comments.

Notes

1. I have used their case study of Cassis as an inspiration and source of information for this article.

2. ‘Garbage comes from somewhere and belongs to someone’ (Heimer and Stinchcombe 1999: 25).

3. Another shortcoming of Stone Sweet's model seems to be that it does not have room for this last scenario. It does not account for judgments of constitutional courts, which are ignored or legislative counter-measures, like changing the constitutional document, are initiated.

4. ‘Quantitative restrictions on imports and all measures having equivalent effect shall be prohibited between member states’ (Article 30 EEC).

5. This is the most important element in our context. Its implications were also discussed right after the judgment, which shows that one was aware of possible consequences (see, for example, Slot 1975).

6. Although the Tindeman report ended in the garbage can at that time some of its ideas can be found in later proposals on institutional reform.