Submitted by Political Commission 1: Institutions and Governance.

JEF Europe,

• Recognizing the necessity of having a reformed European judicial system that is in line with the values of the rule of law;

• Concerned about potential conflicts of interpretation between national courts and the European Court of Justice (ECJ), and particularly over some national courts’ refusal to acknowledge the primacy of the ECJ over European law;

• Concerned by the risk of ECJ and national courts disagreeing over whether European or national law is concerned in particular cases;

• Concerned about the competence rows between the ECJ and German and Polish courts, which threatened the legal integrity of the European Union;

• Mindful of the lessons learned from federal judicial systems such as the United States and Germany, in managing constitutional disputes and conflicts of competence;

• Alarmed by the erosion of the rule of law in several EU member states, most notably in Hungary;

• Regretting that the European Courts of Justice cannot directly overrule national court decisions that misapply European law, even though the ECJ has primacy in this domain;

• Concerned that there is no possibility to appeal to a European court against national court decisions that misapply law, commit errors, or disregard the rule of law;

• Concerned by the democratic deficit that arises when European judicial decisions are perceived as distant, bureaucratic, or disconnected from citizens’ concerns;

• Determined to promote the understanding of the functioning of the European courts and their significance among EU citizens;

• Convinced that an improved justice system for the European Union, and eventually, for the European Federation, would help make the role and functioning of the court more transparent;

• Reminding that most countries in Europe have both a supreme court that functions as a final court of appeals and a constitutional court in charge of constitutional matters;

• Welcoming such a separation between the supreme and constitutional courts as it allows the courts to specialize and avoids concentrating too much power in a single institution, and convinced that such a system would also be appropriate at the European federal level;

• Regretting that the judges for the European Court of Justice are nominated by each member state, as the judges are not supposed to represent their state;

• Believing that the nominations of the judges should be done by several bodies to ensure that no single institution could dominate the judiciary;

• Stressing the importance of democratic legitimacy in judge selection, as well as the benefits of including national level judges in the selection process;

• Believing that judges should serve only a single non-renewable term;

• Encouraging continuous renewal of the courts to avoid too many justices appointed at the same time by the same institutions;

• Regretting that Ireland, Denmark and Hungary do not take part in the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, as it is established as an enhanced cooperation between the other members;

• Welcoming that court decisions increasingly elect to take inspiration from other EU member states’ legal codes and interpretations in order to find the best possible cases;

• Underlining that the European courts can search for best interpretation amongst already existing cases among member states for inspiration when doing so would be reasonable;

• Recognising that member states will keep their own criminal and civil law and expecting the European federal courts to focus on application of European law;

• Approving the current functioning of the European Court of Human Rights and its role in defending human rights across the continent;

• Welcoming that many countries outside the EU also participate in the European Court of Human Rights;

• Recalling the relevant jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice, such as Costa v. ENEL and Van Gend en Loos, which laid the foundations for the principles of primacy and direct effect of European law;

JEF Europe, therefore,

1. Calls for replacing the current European Court of Justice with two separate courts, the European Supreme Court and the European Constitutional Court;

2. Calls for the European Supreme Court to act as a final court of appeals to ensure correct and consistent application of European law and to correct errors committed by national courts;

3. Calls for the European Constitutional Court to be the final authority in regards to interpretations of the Constitution of the European Federation (or in regard to the EU treaties) and the final arbitrer in case of competency conflicts between various institutions within the European Federation, and in cases of competency conflict between federal, national and regional levels;

4. Calls for the preservation of the General Court as a court of first instance before the European Supreme Court to prevent any errors in law at the federal level and enhance the legitimacy of the federal judiciary and calls for the appointment of judges to the General Court to occur in an improved manner, similar to the method described in point 5;

5. Calls for each of these two main courts of justice to be composed of 15 judges appointed for a single non-renewable term of 15 years in the following manner:

   1. 5 members to be appointed by the lower chamber of the European legislature, it shall appoint one judge to each court every 3 years;

   2. 5 members to be appointed by the higher chamber of the European legislature, it shall appoint one judge to each court every 3 years;

   3. 5 members to be appointed by a European council of judges composed of judges from each member state, with the judicial body of each member state selecting its representatives, it shall appoint one judge to each court every 3 years;

   4. In case of resignation or death, a judge shall be appointed only for the remainder of the mandate. A judge appointed in this way will only be eligible for reelection if they served less than 3 years in total at the time of election;

   5. In the event that an institution fails to elect a judge in time, the court will temporarily have fewer judges. Once the vacancy is filled, the newly elected judge will complete the original duration of the mandate, which will not be extended by the duration of the vacancy;

   6. In order to avoid large countries from dominating the courts, at no point should more than 3 judges of the two combined courts be from the same country;

6. Calls for the courts to function by majority voting, with disagreeing judges guaranteed the right to publish their dissenting opinions;

7. Calls for the citizens to be able to appeal directly to the European courts, similar to how they can appeal directly to national supreme and constitutional courts;

8. Calls for the European Court of Human Rights to be maintained as an institution independent of the European Federation, and related to the Council of Europe;

9. Calls for the European Public Prosecutor’s Office to be expanded to cover all member states and calls for increasing its competencies to cover violations of European federal law and the prevention of such.