ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the contribution of the EU Court of Justice – affecting both the European and the national level – in addressing the challenges and the consequences of the global financial and economic crisis. It assesses the treatment in the jurisdiction exercised by the Court of legal claims posed against the EU mechanisms adopted to manage the crisis and of claims advanced in the context of local pressures arising from the crisis. Its main contention is that the Court of Justice – an influential institutional actor in the EU political arena – could have engaged with the crisis and its consequences in a different manner. The contrasting judicial approaches followed in different cases reveal that the socio-economic impact of the crisis on individuals and the rights and interests of individuals could have been given a different treatment in the judgments, which – by providing a close reading of the applicable legal provisions – ultimately confirmed the political consensus developed at the European level concerning the management of the crisis.
