From high judges to policy stakeholders: a public policy approach to the CJEU’s power

ABSTRACT

The debate about the power of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has mainly focussed on the preferences, perceptions and strategic considerations of the High Judges in Luxemburg. This Special Issue turns the analytical spotlight to another important determinant: the behaviour of actors with a stake in the policy conflicts resolved by the Court. Indeed, the CJEU’s influence depends, first, on being invited by stakeholders to intervene in the policy process through litigation and, second, on the correct implementation of its ruling by policy stakeholders. This Special Issue shows that actors’ propensity to litigate before the CJEU and their reactions to Court’s rulings are highly dependent on policy-specific actors’ constellations and governance structures. By focussing on how policy stakeholders and sector specific governance structures influence the Court’s impact, this introduction spells out what we call a ‘public policy approach’ to judicial power and summarizes the content and findings of the Special Issue.

KEYWORDS:

• Compliance
• Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)
• judicial politics
• litigation
• policy stakeholders
• public policy

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for the generous funding that allowed us to bring together the group of scholars and articles that made this Special Issue possible, to the German Research Institute for Public Administration Speyer and the Leibniz Gemeinschaft for general support, to all the participants of the FÖV-WZB Workshop ‘Implementation and Judicial Politics: Conflict and Compliance in the EU Multi-Level System’ for useful comments on earlier versions of the articles of the Special Issue, and to both reviewers who helped us to improve this introduction, as well as the different articles of the Special Issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung [Az. 30.15.0.150IB], the German Research Institute for Public Administration Speyer and the Leibniz Gemeinschaft.