The Court of Justice of the EU, Supranational Sovereignty and the EMU Crisis

The paper starts from the underlying assumption according to which the rule of law - sovereignty nexus continues to shape EU action: The economic and financial crisis increased legal integration and therefore led to more rule of law. We should therefore expect a strengthening of the Court in the EU's political system and observe a continued defence of supranational institutions against member state sovereignty in its rulings. At the same time, however the decision-making process leading to these new economic governance systems took mostly place in the intergovernmental realm. Our aim is to study this tension empirically, on concentrating on CJEU rulings on this matter since 2011: does the Court defend supranational sovereignty or does it take national sovereignty concerns into account? Or does it neither? Based on a conceptual framework combining a legal and a political science approach, the aim is to analyze whether we can indeed observe a coherent political attitude of the Court with regard to MS sovereignty in the context of the EMU crisis.