President Koen Lenaerts - The Court of Justice in an Uncertain World
Channel: IIEA
Date: 16/12/2016

About the Speech

In his address, President Lenaerts addressed serious societal challenges such as terrorism, mass migration and the fall-out of the banking crisis, which have found their way on to the docket of the European Court of Justice, each of which may be seen as posing an existential threat to different aspects of the EU project. He argued that in decisions of the Court, consideration must be given to the long term values which underpin the EU. He used the examples of the case-law of the Court of Justice of the past few years – among others the Digital Rights, the Schrems case on data flows to third countries, the Aranyosi and C?ld?raru cases on human rights and detention, and the Gauweiler concerning the legality of the decision by the European Central bank on Outright Monetary Transactions, to illustrate how the Court has sought to uphold common European values in dealing with the challenges presented by these seminal cases.

 
About the Speaker

Koen Lenaerts has been President of the European Union Court of Justice since October 2015. Prior to this appointment he was Vice President and was a judge at the Court of Justice from 2003-2013. From September 1989 to October 2003, he was a Judge at the Court of First Instance of the European Communities. A professor at the College of Europe in Bruges from 1984-1989, he studied law in the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and in Harvard, where he was a classmate of the future Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John Roberts.