Saturday, March 15, 2014
Presidential Board Room (Omni Shoreham)
According to the European treaties, the judges and advocates general of the European Court of Justice are appointed ‘by common accord of the governments of the Member States’ for a renewable term of six years. If the appointment of ECJ members is officially executed in common, it is widely known, however, that individual candidates are exclusively chosen on the national level. What criteria matter when governments recruit a judge or an advocate general for the ECJ? A substantial professional experience as a magistrate? Competences in a particular field of law? Ideas on European integration? Personal and political affiliations? Until today, the selection process governing the recruitment of European judges and advocates general remains relatively impenetrable. Based on so far unused primary sources from the national archives of the founding member states, this paper will, for the first time, propose a historical analysis of the appointment mechanism. It will reveal how and why those who worked at the European Court of Justice between 1952 and 1972 were picked by the governments of their native states and demonstrate that appointments during that period, and hence probably also afterwards, were far more political than presumed up until now. It will then address a question that is of great importance in the understanding of the functioning of the European Court of Justice: did governments use the appointment mechanism in order to control the ECJ and was the judges’ independence affected by the political functioning of the selection process?
