By voting against the common position (Decision 2021/23) of the Council of the European Union of November 2020 on the rescheduling of cannabis, Hungary infringed EU law, ruled the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in a judgment handed down on Tuesday 27 January (Case C-271/23).
At a session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Hungary voted in breach of the common position adopted by the Council and made a statement contradicting that common position. The European Commission brought an action for failure to fulfil obligations against Hungary, arguing that it had infringed the Union’s exclusive external competence and acted in breach of the principle of sincere cooperation.
In its judgment, the Court of Justice of the EU rules in favour of the Commission.
The European Court notes that decisions amending the scheduling of substances contained in the 1961 United Nations Convention on Narcotic Drugs, as amended in 1972, can affect and alter EU law directly. In its view, the adoption of a position to be taken by the Member States on behalf of the Union with regard to such decisions thus falls within the EU’s exclusive competence (Article 3(2) TFEU), a competence that Hungary disregarded in this case by acting in the way it did.
The CJEU is also of the opinion that Hungary compromised the principles of sincere cooperation (Article 4(3) TEU) and of unity in the international representation of the EU and its Member States, which must abstain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s common objectives.
Finally, the Court states that, in the context of an action for failure to fulfil obligations, a Member State cannot properly plead that an act of an EU institution or body is unlawful. It considers that this would allow the country to ‘take the law into its own hands’, which would run counter to the rule of law.
However, the CJEU points out that the position could be different only where the Member State challenges an act that contains such particularly serious and manifest defects that it could be categorised as a non-existent act.
See the judgment of the Court of Justice:https://aeur.eu/f/kfp (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)