EU Values Before the Court of Justice

Book excerpt: The European Union's values - enshrined in Article 2 TEU - have come under severe pressure in several Member States. In response, the Court of Justice has set a spectacular development in motion. With its ruling in Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses it activated the Union's common values and positioned Article 2 TEU at the very heart of its jurisprudence. Turning Article 2 TEU into an operational, judicially applicable provision, the Court has begun to assess the Member States' constitutional structures against these yardsticks. Since then, the jurisprudence has evolved with remarkable speed. EU Values Before the Court of Justice provides a first comprehensive study of the judicial mobilisation of Article 2 TEU. It starts by developing the foundations of this emerging jurisprudence in empirical, doctrinal, and theoretical terms. In this book, Spieker seeks to advance a new understanding of Article 2. He argues that the provision should be understood as having a dual character that resonates between two dimensions, namely an EU dimension limited to the EU legal order and a 'Verbund' dimension that extends to the common whole of the Union and its Member States. Article 2 plays different roles in these two spheres - as thick constitutional core of the EU legal order and as thin constitutional frame for the 'Verbund'. This dual character should guide the provision's future judicial development. The book sets out to explore the multifaceted potential of Article 2 TEU in each of these two dimensions. As such, it goes far beyond the current focus on illiberal developments in Member States and strives to broaden our horizon for the judicial mobilisation of EU values. The book closes by assessing the risks of placing an activated Article 2 into the hands of Luxembourg judges and proposes ways to recalibrate the jurisprudence.