Giving (some) Legal Rights Practical Effect: The European Union’s Uneven Policy on Access to Justice for Interest Groups

By virtue of its superiority and direct effect, EU law vests its subjects with a wide array of rights that citizens can use against their national authorities. Direct effect, however, does not mean that rights are always directly effective. Rights have to be activated – claimed – in face of alleged infringements, and not every individual with a valid claim can muster the necessary resources to activate the legal system and sustain a challenge. Support by interest groups for rights claims has been shown to have a significant influence on outcomes. At the same time, there is a large variance in interest groups’ ability to lend such support. The conditions for access to courts for such groups are extremely heterogeneous, particularly regarding standing and costs, and are often more restrictive than rules concerning individuals. Over the last decade, EU institutions have pursued various initiatives to expand ‘access to justice’ for interest groups in national courts, particularly for civil society organisations defending ‘diffuse’ interests. Theses efforts, however, are restricted to policy areas such as non-discrimination and the environment and notably exclude core areas of social policy, such as access to welfare benefits. This paper investigates whether there is a gap in the effectiveness of legal rights where interest groups lack access to justice and how much of this is influenced by the EU’s uneven access to justice policy.