The Concept of Autonomy of EU Law from the Comparative Perspective of International Law and the Legal Systems of Member States

Molnár, Tamás (2016) The Concept of Autonomy of EU Law from the Comparative Perspective of International Law and the Legal Systems of Member States. In: Hungarian Yearbook of International Law and European Law 2015. Eleven International Publishing, pp. 433-459.

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Abstract

The concept of the autonomy of EU law has received, since its inception in the 1960s, remarkably little academic attention when compared to other basic EU law premises such as “primacy” or “direct effect”, particularly from the theoretical angle. However, “autonomy” is undisputedly a fundamental and structural principle of the EU legal order. Given the reflexive nature of the term “autonomy”, to be distinct from something and to be able to function separately, it presupposes one or more points of reference. If these are assumed in the form of legal orders, the autonomy of EU law can be basically conceived in two ways: vis-à-vis international law or the legal systems of Member States. The article analyses and clarifies the meaning of the two dimensions of autonomy of EU law (external and internal aspects). The theoretical prerequisites of any ‘legal order’, including its autonomous regime of validity and its mechanism guaranteeing the unity of interpretation, are shortly studied as well. Finally, after comparing the methods and requirements to protect the external and internal dimensions of the claimed autonomy, the paper concludes that the fully-fledged autonomy of the EU legal order is more dependent on its relation to the national legal orders (which is factual and concrete) than to general international law (which is, to a large extent, principally conceptual).

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