The parallel world of EU law

The EU courts are not like our courts. They are given a specific purpose of advancing the union. That purpose can be hard to spot and does get denied. I would say that is a court being required to do politics. Our courts do not try to advance the interests of our country – they just do law.

In 2014 on the EU Courts the more diplomatic Foreign Office said ‘Both principles [subsidiarity and proportionality] are “legal” principles in that the EU institutions are bound by them and cannot legally act in breach of them. However, given their nature, they require significant political judgment’. Those quote marks in paragraph 2.7 are doing a titanic amount of heavy lifting.

But they are not like our courts and we’ve just seen the European Court of Justice accused of constructing a parallel universe by one eminent professor of law and being akin to something out of Alice in Wonderland by another.