The President of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), Koen Lenaerts, said on Thursday 4 June in Luxembourg that “the risk of the Court of Justice being used for instrumentalisation is huge”.
Mr Lenaerts cited several examples of cases where this kind of instrumentalisation for political ends had occurred. In his opinion, the lodging of appeals is not in itself negative, insofar as it can also be carried out by MEPs or Member States who have found themselves in the minority on an issue, and sometimes just by a small margin. He referred to the European Parliament’s current appeal on the EU/Mercosur trade agreement (see EUROPE 13791/2), as well as the appeal by Denmark and Sweden on the directive governing minimum wages (see EUROPE 13750/28), the latter case having been won in part by Denmark.
Another case concerns the appeal lodged by the Spanish opposition against the amnesty law put forward by Pedro Sánchez’s government that targets certain Catalan separatists.
Mr Lenaerts declined to comment on these thorny issues. However, he stressed to the press responsible for reporting on European case law the importance of “distinguishing between politics and law” as interpreted by the CJEU.
Hungary. When asked about the recent judgment overturning the Hungarian law on child protection, which had been promoted by the former ‘Orbán’ government and which stigmatises the rights of LGBTIQ+ people (see EUROPE 13853/24), the President of the Court stated that it is now up to the Péter Magyar government to amend this law in order to comply with a judgment which, for the first time, constitutes a direct breach of the fundamental values enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on the European Union.
The ruling clearly states that “a Member State has a wide margin of manoeuvre to protect minors from (certain) content” such as “pornography”, provided that this restriction on access is “neutral in terms of gender equality and sexual orientation”, he said.
In response to a question from Agence Europe pointing out that the ruling came less than ten days after the parliamentary elections in Hungary, which were lost by Viktor Orbán, Mr Lenaerts said that “this judgment was handed down when it was ready”.
Read the speech given by Mr Lenaerts: https://aeur.eu/f/m6p (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)