Judicial Control of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy

​The aim of the seminar was to reflect on the evolving case law of the Court of Justice on judicial protection in the area of Common Foreign and Security Policy. The ruling of the Court in Case C-72/15 Rosneft, which was handed down in March 2017, provided an opportunity to take stock of the developments. As is well known, the EU Treaties seem largely to exclude the Court from the field of CFSP; yet the case law now limits the importance of that exclusion. The seminar took place in the Engel Room of the Foreign Ministry and was well attended by judges, civil servants and academics.

The seminar was kicked off by Dr Joni Heliskoski, Director of EU Litigation at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, who explored the way the text of the Treaty had developed on the matter. This was followed by a presentation by Prof Christophe Hillion of the University of Leiden and the University of Gothenburg, who placed the recent developments in the context of the evolution of the general judicial protection case law since the seminal Les Verts judgment in 1986. Judge Allan Rosas of the Court of Justice then analysed the relationship between the landmark Opinion 2/13 on EU’s Accession to the ECHR and the ruling in Rosneft, coming to the conclusion that not all gaps have been filled by the case law. These presentations were followed by two comparative papers. Prof Volker Röben of Swansea University drew lessons from the jurisprudence of the senior courts of the US, the UK, Germany and France, and argued that the EU Court’s evolving approach is a part of a broader international trend. Finally Prof Jukka Snell of the University of Turku and Swansea University examined the rich and long standing case law of the Court on public security exceptions, seeking to discover parallels that might help to explain and predict the Court’s approach in the field of CFSP.