Judicial Protection in the EU

Abstract

The article consists of five parts. The first part provides an analysis of the „principle of „effective judicial protection and control“. The European Court of Justice developed this principle as „effective judicial control“ or, more broadly, effective judicial protection in its early case law, and has continuously refined and specified it. Court developed the principles of effectiveness (a remedy should not only compensate the victim for a potential loss of or injury to a right, but also deter potential wrongdoers from violating it in the first place) and equivalence (the protection of Community law rights should be equivalent in strength and scope to the protection of similar rights granted under national law). The second part of the article presents a research on cross-border judicial protection with the main attention to the Brussels Convention of 1968 (as amended) and Brussels Regulation 44/2001 specifying its impact on consumer contracts and employment contracts. Indirect protection via the reference procedure is analysed in the third part of the article. Original objectives of the Community law uniformity are explored, as well as the new function of the reference procedure – (indirect) individual rights protection is estimated. The author considers the absence of a constitutional complaint in EU law against legislative acts, discusses the limited scope of direct actions under Community law, distinguishes regulations of direct and individual concern. Finally, in the fifth part of the article, new proposals to extend standing in the Draft Constitution of the EU is evaluated.