ABSTRACT – For the first time, in the judgment Krajowa Rada Sądownictwa (Maintien en fonctions d’un juge), the Court of Justice has declared inadmissible a request for a preliminary ruling made by the Polish Supreme Court due to irregularities in the appointment procedure of the members of the panel adjudicating in the national proceeding. The case raises once again the delicate issue of defining the relations between the independence criterion as part of the notion of ‘court or tribunal’ under article 267 TFUE and the Court’s case law on the principle of judicial independence based on articles 19 TEU and 47 of the Charter. This comment critically analyses the partial overlap between the different strands of the Court’s case law on judicial independence, which lies at the basis of the judgment Krajowa Rada Sądownictwa, in light of the different functions performed by the independence requirement under articles 267 TFEU, 19 TEU and 47 of the Charter.

ABSTRACT – The recent Opinion of Advocate General de la Tour in Cases C-808/21, Commission v Czech Republic, and C-814/21, Commission v Poland, provide an opportunity to focus on the right to stand as a candidate of ‘mobile’ citizens of the EU and the possibility for Member States to introduce limitations and derogations to their right to become members of a political parties. In a broader context characterised by the objective of creating a European political conscience and pending the pronouncement of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the present paper aims to evaluate whether, as argued by the Commission and endorsed by the Advocate General, Poland and the Czech Republic have gone beyond the margin of discretion granted to them by European Union law or, on the contrary, whether, as argued by those countries, the limitation of membership of political parties to national citizens only is a justified measure under Article 4(2) TEU.

In Case C-689/21, the Court of Justice examines the ipso iure loss of Danish nationality at the age of 22 for those born abroad. The judgement, in line with an established case-law, confirms the possibility for Member States to link the retention of national citizenship to the existence of a genuine link between the State of nationality and its nationals. However, the revocation of national citizenship, especially when it also entails the loss of citizenship of the Union, must be subject to an individual examination of the proportionality of the consequences of the loss, to be carried out by considering the real and demonstrated effects.

ABSTRACT – In the judgment Meta Platforms e a., delivered on 4 July 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union stated that national competition authorities can find, in the context of the examination of an abuse of a dominant position by an undertaking, that the latter’s general terms of use relating to the processing of personal data and the implementation thereof are not consistent with the GDPR, where that finding is necessary to establish the existence of such an abuse. In absence of EU legislation concerning the issue, the Court clarified that the duty of cooperation between authorities stems directly from the duty of sincere cooperation, enshrined in Art. 4, para. 3, TEU. It follows from the foregoing that administrative authorities, endowed with different tasks and pursuing different objectives, must cooperate to ensure the effective application of EU competition law and, at the same time, the coherence of EU data protection legislation. The contribution aims at highlighting the novelties introduced by the judgment, against the existing legal framework. Besides that, it purports to shed light on the way how the duty of sincere cooperation shapes the relationship between national authorities, emphasizing the central role played by national data protection supervisory authorities, charged with the control of the effective application of the GDPR. As will be explained, such a solution not only involves procedural aspects, but also has substantive implications.