'Judicial Cooperation in Civil Matters' (EUstitia): The Politics of Civil Justice under the EU's Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ)

Hartnell, Helen E. (2015) 'Judicial Cooperation in Civil Matters' (EUstitia): The Politics of Civil Justice under the EU's Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). [Conference Proceedings] (Submitted)

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Abstract

Introduction: This paper maps the EU's civil justice policy field, and offers some ideas about the broader significance of these developments. Since 1999, when the Amsterdam Treaty communitarized "judicial cooperation in civil matters" and the European Council laid out a five-year plan at its Tampere Summit, the EU's efforts to create a "genuine area of justice (Tampere Milestones, I.3.5 & I.3.7) have been rapid and dramatic. The AFSJ field was "transformed ... into a huge 'building site' " (Weyembergh 2000). More than a dozen substantial - and in some cases highly ambitious and controversial - legislative and other civil justice measures have been adopted, and more are in the pipeline.1 These measures permeate the legal infrastructure upon which the EU's legal order is built. Some of them surpass even the broadest reading of the formal Treaty language on "judicial cooperation". The scope and pace of these developments have been so dramatic that even experts in the affected fields were initially caught by surprise.2

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