The Impact of the European Court of Justice on Neighbouring Countries: Introduction

Abstract

This is the introductory chapter of a book just published by OUP, based on a research project initiated and administered by the authors. The book aims to explore the external impact of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU); that is, the influence its judgments have outside the borders of the EU, and in particular on the legal systems of countries in the European neighborhood. To that effect, this project has brought together a team of scholars from the countries involved, where each of them was asked to explore, document, and analyze the extent of citing of CJEU judgments in his or her respective country and what influence such judgments have had on their legal systems. The contributions of these scholars cover the legal systems of Armenia — Narine Ghazaryan (Chapter 9), Azerbaijan — Azar Aliyev (Chapter 10), Georgia — Gaga Gabrichidze (Chapter 11), Israel — Arie Reich (Chapter 12), Jordan — Abdullah Nawafleh (Chapter 13), Russia — Paul Kalinichenko (Chapter 7), Switzerland — Francesco Maiani (Chapter 5), Tunisia — Béligh Elbalti (Chapter 14), Turkey — Ulaş Karan (Chapter 6), and the Ukraine — Roman Petrov (Chapter 8), as well as the Eurasian Economic Union — Maksim Karliuk (Chapter 4). In addition, the book includes a contribution by the former CJEU Judge Allan Rosas (Chapter 3), whose objective is to discuss the extent of citing by the CJEU of judgments from other courts, and whether such judgments have any influence on the CJEU, in other words, influence going the other way. The book opens with a contribution by Joanne Scott (Chapter 2), where she explores and structures the impact of CJEU case law in enhancing the global reach of EU law and the influence of the Court’s judgments abroad. Arie Reich and Hans Micklitz have laid down the objectives of the research in the introduction and analyzed the findings in the book’s conclusion.

Keywords: European Union, European Court of Justice, European Neighborhood, Comparative Law, Judicial Influence

JEL Classification: F02, F15, F53, F55, K21, K33, K37