Member State Alliances Before the Court of Justice of the EU 1997-2008

This paper investigates the behavior of the member states of the European Union in preliminary reference proceedings at the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). The CJEU is widely considered to be the world’s most powerful international court, and has delivered decisions in a wide array of policy areas, from labour rights, pension schemes and insurance policies to abortion laws. The member states’ governments have the right to submit ‘observations’, i.e. positions and arguments, to the court. We have collected and coded all observations during the years 1997-2008. The paper uses this data to study patterns of opinions between member states; who tends to agree with whom and who tends to be of opposite opinions. We try to explain the patterns by looking at various explanatory factors such as the degree of state regulation, openness to trade, the strength of labour, etc., indicating whether member states primarily defend their national interest or not. We also give a rough aggregate description of what kind of cases the CJEU dealt with during the period, indicating that economic matters, such as agricultural subsidies, indirect taxes, the free movement of goods and services, dominate the court’s agenda.