The 'Multilogue' Among National Courts: Implications for the Legal Authority of the Court of Justice of the European Union

A British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship held at Oxford by Vilija Vėlyvytė, from 2018 to 2023.

Contributing to the scholarship on European integration, my project offers an original perspective on how inter-institutional relationships within the EU's legal space shape the authority of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to interpret EU law across the Member States. It does so by investigating the growing practice among national constitutional courts to refer to one another's legal reasoning for resolving conflicts and tensions between national constitutional law and EU law. I suggest that this practice, which I call the 'multilogue', might cause a gradual decline in the legal authority of the CJEU in domestic legal systems because it encourages the fragmentation of EU law and promotes the institutional disengagement of national courts from the CJEU. Accordingly, I will explore what form of cooperation could reinvigorate the dialogue between the CJEU and national constitutional courts, thereby preserving CJEU authority and the integrity of the EU legal order.