European Union

Piet Eeckhout is Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for European Law at King's College London. He was a member of the legal team for the applicant Yassin Kadi. The European Court of Justice's approach in the Kadi decision has already been described as sharply dualist (see,Professor Joseph Weiler's EJIL editorial, posted here on this blog and Gráinne de Búrca, "The European Court of Justice and the International Legal Order after Kadi", Jean Monnet Working Paper No. 01/09).  The Court emphasises the autonomy of the Community legal order. Judicial review in the light of fundamental rights is the expression of a constitutional guarantee stemming from the EC Treaty as an autonomous legal system, a guarantee which is not to be prejudiced by an international agreement. Not even the UN Charter is capable of interfering with that guarantee, notwithstanding the Charter's primacy under international law, a primacy which the Court accepts. The strong confirmation of the autonomy of Community law is undeniable. But there is…