Independent courts

Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) sets out the values on which the European Union (EU) is based. These include the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights, and respect for these values is a condition for countries to gain EU membership. It follows that countries, once they become EU Member States, must uphold these values. The concept of the rule of law encapsulates aspects such as the independence of the courts from the other branches of government (executive and legislative). All members of a society and branches of government (executive and legislative) are thus subject to the law, under the control of an independent legal system, irrespective of political majorities.

This is echoed in Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which concerns the rights to an effective remedy and to a fair trial, reflecting the values espoused in Article 2 TEU, and in Article 19(1) TEU, which requires Member States to put measures in place to ensure effective legal protection in the fields covered by EU law.

Over the years, the Court of Justice of the European Union has played an important role in safeguarding judicial independence in the Member States. A landmark judgment in the Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses case (Case C-64/16), brought before the Court of Justice via the preliminary reference procedure, clarified that the EU principle of judicial independence presupposes that the courts exercise their judicial functions wholly autonomously, without being subject to any hierarchical constraint or subordinated to any other body and without taking orders or instructions from any source whatsoever, and that the legal system is thus protected against external interventions or pressure liable to impair the independent judgment of its members or influence their decisions.

The EU has a number of tools at its disposal to ensure the respect of the rule of law in all Member States (rule-of-law toolbox), such as the EU justice scoreboard, the Rule-of-Law Mechanism (with an annual rule-of-law report at its centre) and the European semester.

Every year, as part of the EU’s rule-of-law toolbox, the European Commission presents the EU justice scoreboard. The scoreboard provides a comparative overview of EU justice systems, using indicators focusing on the efficiency, quality and independence of justice – the essential parameters of effective justice systems. Complementing this is the annual rule-of-law report, the first edition of which was published in 2020, which provides a country-specific summary of significant developments in this field in Member States.