These values are set by the 27 national political systems. They have enshrined in Article 2 of the Funding Treaty. This is not something invented by the European Commission or by the CJEU, they did not come from above. They have articulated first half a century ago in 1973 by the Member States. They mirror half a century of living together in Europe.
These values, however, are increasingly instrumentalized to pursue goals that are rather political in nature. How do you see this development?
I think that these political issues are also legal issues. They are political because they affect the entire community, because they are important. Nonetheless, because of that they are also legal issues and have to be applied as such. The aspect that they also have a political dimension does not change that they are legal issues.
The values contained in Article 2 are not just for the Union, they refer to all Member States.
They are set out not just for how the European Union is operating, but each and every Member State much respect them. They are relevant both for the European Union as well as for the Member States.
What is the legal and institutional significance of the “judicial dialogue” in the European judicial area in your view?
Escalating controversies can be harmful to both the European integration and to its Member States along with their citizens. They usually come with high costs. At the same time, there are many institutions which claim to have ultimate authority, but there is no formal mechanism to settle their relations. For these reasons,
judicial dialogue in the European judicial space has quite an important role to play.
Such a dialogue is only possible if there exists a mindset and readiness for it. We see examples when this dialogue does not work anymore, But these are exceptions and hopefully other institutions will learn on that exception that is important to maintain a dialogue. At the end, every system has an interest and an obligation to keep the European Union running.
Is it a dialogue among “equals” in a sense that they have the same positions at the table or is it rather a hierarchical relationship?
We should not address this question in terms of hierarchy. It is better to address it in terms of competences. Both the Founding Treaties as well as the jurisprudence of the CJEU have been affirmed by the Member States, they provide the basic structure of cooperation. At the same time, in that system the domestic constitutional courts are not put as inferior institutions, because the basic framework of dialogue is provided by the preliminary ruling procedure.
It is not a relationship of revision,