Paving the Way : Adjustments of Systems and Mutual Influences between the European Court of Human Rights and European Union Law before Accession

The negotiations on accession of the EU to the ECHR successfully ended on April 5,
2013. While they remain, until accession, autonomous and separate from an
institutional point of view, the two European legal orders have not developed in
isolation. Just as the CJEU has done vis-à-vis the Strasbourg system, the ECtHR has
had to take into account the law emanating from the EU. Accession is admittedly
viewed as a simplification, or at least a standardisation, of the relationship between the
two European systems and the two courts. However, the pressure put on the ECtHR in
this regard must not be overlooked. Having implicitly assumed a leading role in the
management of the interaction of the two systems and the interdependence of the two
bodies of case law before accession, the ECtHR will formally inherit that responsibility
thereafter. This article seeks to contribute to the extensive literature on accession by
assessing the case law on the relationship between the ECtHR and EU law prior to
accession. In particular, taking stock of the reasoning of the ECtHR helps our
understanding of how the court has paved the way for accession and how its EU-related
case law is relevant for the further development of the European public order postaccession.