Oldal 394 [394]
DIMITRY VLADIMIROVICH KOCHENOV
was seemingly disconnected from the rule of law issues as such and concerned
environmental protection measures, yes, scholars saw the implications of saving a
UNESCO-protected forest from the spruce beetle instantly as the dawn of a new
era in the understanding of interim relief reguired and authorized by EU law.?
Most importantly, the case-law on the interim-relief by the Court of Justice
can in fact be viewed as set of examples to follow for the national courts enforcing
EU law. These are obliged to grant interim relief to ensure that EU law rights are
preserved ‘before it’s too late’, as President Lenaerts also underlines in his scholarly
writings.*
New case-law has revolutionized interim relief in reaction to the attacks to the
whole systems of institutions as it brought about the requirement of status quo ante
restoration: the reversal of the attack.*® Such developments, combined with newly¬
discovered monetary tools to influence the authorities, which are particularly
persistent in their failure to comply, as we have seen in the Polish Forest, bring
the system of remedies in EU law to a new level in terms of guaranteeing effective
compliance with the principle of the rule of law.
SUPRANATIONAL CONSEQUENCE: A GRADUAL UPGRADE OF EU Law
The most recent rule of law developments have had a direct and unmistakable
impact on the supranational level of the law. Form Commission v. France, which
outlawed the abuse of CILFIT solidifying, from the EC)’s point of view, the unequal
relationship between the courts engaging in the dialogue the Court is striving to
protect, to the tightening of the independence requirement applied to any body
aspiring to qualify as a ‘court of tribunal’ of a Member State in the sense of Article
267 TFEU, the law as it stands draws directly on the saga of Portuguese Judges and
the Commission v. Poland cases.
Going sector specific the direction of the development of the law is largely
similar, as also the case law on the meaning of the ‘judicial authority’ under the
EAW FD saw a significant tightening of the notion of ‘independence’ which is
required in order to be able to send EAW requests. The Prosecutors’ Cases make
23 Wenneras, Saving a forest and the rule of law, 541.
24 Lenaerts, Our Judicial, 157 and the references cited therein.
25 This does not, regrettably, apply to the defense of the independence of the supranational
judiciaries, as it clear from the Court of Justice’s own Sharpston cases. For a detailed
analysis, see, Graham Butler — Dimitry Kochenov, Independence and Lawful Composition
of the Court of Justice of the European Union, Jean Monnet Paper (2020), https://
jeanmonnetprogram.org/wp-content/uploads/JMW P-02-Dimitry-Kochenov-Graham¬
Butler.pdf.
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