The Interpretation of Community Law by the European Court of Justice

Abstract

In the legal literature on European integration there is a rather stereotyped tendency to constantly discover new elements of rupture with the past. In the legal domain, at every step we are confronted with some revolutionary novelty arising from European institutions and practices; on a regular basis, we face innovations which are said to mark significant developments in respect of the traditional forms of international governance as well as in respect of the traditional forms of national federalism. The vast literature on the interpretative criteria adopted by the European Court of Justice (hereafter the “ECJ”) only partially escapes this tendency. Surely the experience of European legal integration does not lack revolutionary ruptures and, also from the viewpoint of legal argumentation, it is true that the interaction between jurists coming from different legal experiences has produced some novelties: for example, an increasing hybridization and crossover effect (“Europeanisation”) between patterns of legal reasoning which are characteristic of different national legal cultures. However, this phenomenon has been largely tempered by the typically French syllogistic judicial style of ECJ's rulings. Moreover, despite the novelties identified, the literature on Community law interpretation cannot deny the apparent fact that the interpretative criteria and, more generally, the legal argumentation techniques of the ECJ are essentially the same ones which are familiar to the national legal contexts. It would be surprising if this were not the case, since the judges of the ECJ are trained within the national legal systems and the judgments of the Court are generally expected to be implemented by the national courts. Their grounds must thus be perceived as being legally sound, and not merely political or evocative.