Lunch seminar with Hubert Bekisz
Below the Court’s Radar: How does the Non-Referring Majority of National Courts Approach EU Procedural Harmonisation?
With decentralised system of EU law enforcement, national courts of the Member States play a pivotal role in safeguarding rights conferred on the EU citizens. Yet, in the lack of European codes of civil, administrative, or criminal procedure, national courts enforce EU rights in the framework of national procedural rules. This assumption, embedded in the principle of procedural autonomy of the Member States, has put at risk effective enforcement of EU law in its day-to-day application. The principles of equivalence, effectiveness, and later effective judicial protection have served as classic limitations to procedural autonomy, attempting to reduce the risk of enforcement fragmentation. Reviewing national procedures in the light them, the CJEU strives to harmonise various procedural aspects, such as time limitations, legal standing, evidentiary standards, or available remedies across policy fields covered by competences of the EU. Procedural law is, however, largely ethnocentric. It is thus at least doubtful whether incidental harmonisation of procedures is smoothly reflected on the ground. In the lack of complete transposition of EU law into a national procedural order, it is assumed that national judges actively enforce it by setting aside conflicting national provisions or providing pro-integrationist interpretations. Nonetheless, the literature on the role of national courts in EU law enforcement overwhelmingly focuses on the preliminary reference procedure. Whilst only a small number of national courts ever refer cases to the CJEU, behaviours of non-referring national courts (acting below the Court’s radar) deciding thousands of EU law linked cases remain an underexplored area.
Against this background, the thesis intends to fill the abovementioned research gap by asking: under which circumstances do national courts disapply national procedural law to yield to procedural rules harmonised at the EU level?
The research question is tackled through qualitative analysis in the form of in-depth case studies of judicial control of asylum decisions in Poland, data protection proceedings in Ireland and consumer litigation in France. To this end, the thesis intends to demonstrate whether national procedures protect stronger parties of disputes (e.g., the Government, big tech, or big business actors), and under which circumstances national judges actively safeguard effective judicial protection of individuals (e.g., asylum seekers, data subjects, or consumers) provided by EU law. Relevant procedural issues (e.g., granting suspensive effect to appeals in asylum proceedings in Poland) are selected within multi-level purposive sampling research design, starting from exploratory semi-structured interviews with national judges aiming at identifying procedural problems hampering EU law’s enforceability. Cross-case comparison intends to unpack socio-legal circumstances influencing behaviours of national judges enforcing EU law on the ground.
Speaker bio
Hubert Bekisz is a PhD Researcher at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. His research interests include EU procedural law, EU law enforcement in national courts, empirical legal research, and data protection.
Hubert has been working as a research assistant on Urška Šadl’s project Judging Under the Influence and as an affiliated researcher to Veronika Fikfak’s project Human Rights Nudge. He holds a master’s degree in Law from the University of Warsaw (2019), an MA in European Interdisciplinary Studies from the College of Europe (2020) and an LLM in Comparative, European and International Laws from the EUI (2021).
At iCourts, Hubert will continue working on his PhD thesis, in which he examines national courts’ approaches to harmonisation of procedures and remedies in the European Union. The aim is to explore under which circumstances do national courts disapply national procedural law to yield to procedural rules harmonised at the EU level.
Meeting ID: 643 6698 6439
Passcode: 417065