Adjudicating Europe

On Tuesday, the Court’s Grande Chambre will deliver its highly awaited decision in the Kücükdeveci case, an important reference on the scope of Directives with horizontal effect and the duties of national judges to set aside national legislation incompatible with the former. According to Advocate General Bot, in his powerful Opinion delivered last year, the time should come for horizontal Directives to have direct effect, at least when the effect entails no discretion on the part of the national judge.

We will see if the Court follows his Advocate General. But if it does, the decision will be of the utmost importance (although the Mangold background and the Court’s very settled case-law on the matter appears to be too heavy a burden to allow any developments).