OCR
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 newlydiscovered 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-GrahamButler.pdf. + 392 +