European Judicial Dialogue on Untouchable Values? Comparative Examination of the Dialogue Between EU Member States’ Constitutional Courts and the CJEU

Since the 1970s, firstly in the jurisprudence of the German Federal and Italian constitutional courts, European Union Member States’ constitutional identity has been in the spotlight regarding European integration. In the past approximately 50 years, many constitutional court decisions in EU Member States have been made concerning EU law, and few of them even questioned the unconditional supremacy of the latter. At the same time, the CJEU has started to gently form the definition of the rule of law within its jurisprudence, the past few years could be labelled as its value-centred case-law. In its milestone judgment (C-156/12) on the conditionality regulation, it stated that values under Article 2 of the TEU, such as the rule of law, constitute the EU’s identity. Consequently, Member States must not render these nugatory. However, the interpretation of other common values is yet to come in the practice of the CJEU. Thus, the questions arise: how should the European judicial dialogue work between the CJEU and EU Member States’ constitutional courts? Could the dialogue help strengthen the protection of fundamental rights within the EU? How can the dialogue be effective in the framework of the preliminary ruling procedure? Are there procedural guarantees in the procedure of the constitutional courts? This proposal aims to contribute to the scientific debate with a comparative examination of five EU Member States constitutional courts (Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Spain) with an approach focusing on the Constitutional Court of Hungary.