EU Procedural Law

This chapter explores the procedural dimension of the process of European integration. This is a potentially vast area, both in terms of scope (given the now extremely extended substantive EU competences) and in terms of sources as it is based on both case law and harmonizing measures. It is also closely intertwined with well-established rules in national legal systems. Despite several reforms of EU competences, the enforcement of EU rights is still largely carried out by national procedures and courts, subject however to the respect of certain general limitations imposed by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In order to provide a systematization of this heterogeneous field, we analyze it through the prism of the EU Treaties and through three key features of EU procedural law: (a) the basic protections which are guaranteed within the context of EU law (b) the flexibility for national legal systems to retain their internal logic and (c) the desire to establish EU standards of procedural protection. The “classification” of the copious acquis communitaire this reveals, allows a critical view to be taken of the judicial analysis of the interests at issue to date.