The judicial application of article 2 TEU values: moving towards a self-standing provision?
Keywords:
European Union Law, Article 2 TEU, fundamental values, Rule of LawCopyright (c) 2024 Revista Jurídica Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Article 2 TEU enshrines the values on which the European Union is founded. Despite its contested legal nature, the Court of Justice has developed a rich case-law on this provision, rendering the judicial application of EU values, on some occasions, as a last-resort mechanism to uphold them. This article examines the conditions in which such judicial application takes place, specifically in relation to the possibility of applying Article 2 TEU as an autonomous and self-standing provision. In doing so, it examines the nature, content and applicability of Article 2 TEU in light of the Court’s recent case-law and of the system of legal remedies enshrined in the Treaties, in order to determine whether this provision may be applied autonomously, as well as the applicable conditions and limits to that end.
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