On May 1-3, Aigars Strupišs, the President of the Supreme Court of Latvia, is participating in the events organized by the Court of Justice of the European Union dedicated to the 20th anniversary since ten countries, including Latvia, joined the single European legal space.

On Wednesday evening, conference guests gathered for the ceremonial reception and welcome address by Koen Lenaerts, the President of the Court of Justice of the European Union, and on Thursday and Friday, the conference "20 years since the accession of 10 States to the European Union: A new constitutional moment for Europe" shall take place.

On the first day of the conference, the moderator of the section "Internal market and social policy challenges", Aigars Strupišs, the President of the Supreme Court of Latvia, will deliver a speech as a representative of national courts. He will speak about judicial challenges in balancing the internal market and social policy. "In these areas, the system of sources of law is complex. It consists of both sources of EU law and complementary sources of national law. Moreover, theoretically, there are still unregulated areas in which regulation is determined only by sources of national law. This creates a number of challenges for judges of national courts," says Aigars Strupišs.

One of the challenges that will be addressed by the President of the Supreme Court of Latvia is the impact of national policy. The President points out that a judge of the courts of the European Union is much less exposed to political pressure from the legislative and executive powers of the member states, as well as to national radicalism and populism than a judge of courts of member states. It is this circumstance – the independence of the Court of Justice of the European Union from national policy, via the institution of preliminary questions, – that provides essential support to national courts in ensuring a balance between interests of national policy and the principles of European integration. For discussion, the President of the Supreme Court will also raise several methodological problems in the application of European Union law at the national level.

The accession of ten countries on May 1, 2004 was the biggest enlargement of the European Union in terms of both number of people and countries. The Court of Justice of the European Union indicates that this accession to the single legal space of the European Union brought in a great diversity of national history, legal culture and traditions; it was a constitutional moment, uniting Eastern and Western Europe. Although the ten new member states joined the Union with particular determination and hoping for freedom, justice and prosperity, they had to overcome significant challenges. Readings and discussions at the conference shall focus on this topic.

The conference will be livestreamed on Friday on the website of the Court of Justice of the European Union: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/p1_4335226/

 

Information prepared by

Rasma Zvejniece, the Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court

E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: +371 67020396, +371 28652211