The Tail That Wags the Dog - Reflections on the Principle of Mutual Trust and the Autonomy of EU Law

Abstract

In Opinion 2/13 the Court of Justice held that accession to the ECHR must not interfere with the operation of the principle of mutual trust as this would affect the autonomy of EU law. I offer a different reading: mutual trust is not a general principle capable of having autonomous legal effects. Furthermore, mutual trust is acquiring a novel value for the progressive operationalisation of the foundational values ex Article 2 TEU. Read in this way, it has then the potential to enhance fundamental rights protection and is certainly no bar to accession to the ECHR – it is the dog of core values that wags the tail of mutual trust and not vice versa.

Keywords

• Autonomy of EU Law
• ECHR
• EU
• EU
• accession
• mutual trust