Abstract | It is a well-known phenomenon that EU law is an exportable commodity, which reaches, among others, the countries in the close (and more remote) vicinity of the European Union. As evidenced in the academic literature, the EU legal order is treated as a point of reference, or even as a model to be followed, by numerous third countries. This can be a consequence of implementation of an agreement with the EU (bilateral or multilateral) or of a voluntary decision to replicate EU legislation in domestic law. In such cases, the EU acquis becomes a legal transplant in a domestic legal act. The question is to what extent the origins of this kind of legislation are known and acknowledged by national courts. In this respect, analysis of national jurisprudence in the EU’s neighbourhood offers a mixed picture. On the one hand, we come across many examples of judicial activism stemming from eagerness to engage in a drive to Europeanisation of the national judiciary or an interest in comparative reasoning. On the other hand, many judges express little or no desire to venture outside their national laws. This, however, does not change the fact that EU law reaches statute books and potentially courts well beyond the geographical borders of EU Member States. It applies to mundane and technical pieces of EU legislation or to more fundamental ones dealing, for instance, with the general principles of EU law. A question that the present chapter endeavours to answer is whether the Charter of Fundamental Rights per se is such an exportable commodity and to what extent, after ten years of its application in the EU as a binding source of law, it has influenced domestic jurisprudence of courts in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood. |
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