The European Union is currently facing a major and unprecedented crisis due to the breakdown of its founding values in some Member States. Unsurprisingly, this democratic backsliding frontally attacks the independence of these states’ judicial apparatus. In the view of this alarming context, this research aims at analyzing how international courts and, in particular, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, can intervene in order to protect the independence of national judicial systems. In order to address this issue, this research will analyse the ECJ and the ECtHR’s actual and potential contributions to the protection of judicial independence within the Member States of the European Union, as well as the limits surrounding their actions. A particular attention will be paid to the effectiveness of their contributions on the basis of existing theoretical frameworks enabling to measure the effectiveness of international case law. This analysis will be part of a broader reflection on the links between judicial independence, the values of democracy and the rule of law, on the concept of illiberal democracy as well as on the tension between sovereignty and the international protection of human rights.
Cecilia Rizcallah is a Guest Professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles and a postdoctoral Researcher at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific research. She holds a PhD in EU law both from the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Université Saint-Louis Bruxelles, a LL.M. in European Law from the College of Europe (Very Good, Baillet-Latour scholar), and a Master of law from the Université libre de Bruxelles (Major de promotion, Ganshof Van Der Meersh Prize).
This Fellow Talk is a closed event.
