03/07/2026
What if the members of the Court of Justice of the European Union own shares in the very same companies involved in cases they decide? What if members do decide cases affecting their own country, whose government may re-appoint them (or not) after their first 6-year mandate? These aren’t new questions, but they’ve always remained taboo both in academia and public discourse.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) plays a central role in upholding EU law. Like any supreme court, its authority depends not only on legal expertise, but also on public confidence in its impartiality. A new investigation by Investigate Europe sheds light on these neglected questions, aiming to constructively nudge the Court to devise a public integrity system up to the standard of a Supreme Court.
A blind spot at the top of EU justice
More than 40% of judges and advocates general at the Court of Justice of the European Union have declared financial interests in companies or sectors that could appear before them, involving firms like AstraZeneca, Merck and BNP Paribas. Several members have regularly serve as rapporteurs on cases involving their own home country.
None of this amounts to a proven conflict of interest. But the CJEU’s own Code of Conduct requires members to avoid any situation that “may give rise to a conflict of interest… or may be perceived as such.”
Yet the Court of Justice of the European Union still falls short of the transparency standards now expected of high supreme courts. The reason is structural. The system relies almost entirely on self-assessment: a member publishes an yearly declaration of financial interest (but no real monitoring nor sanction if she doesn’t), and – in addition – flags on an ad hoc basis a possible conflict to the President, who takes it “into due account” when assigning cases, with no publicity about the process followed nor the criteria used to make that choice.
Any attempt at getting access to such documents – including past financial declarations – is systematically rejected by the Court as it qualifies them “as relating to judicial activities”. Yet there’s nothing judicial in a declaration of financial interest but an administrative act subject to access to document
The Ombudsman steps in
The European Ombudsman has now opened an inquiry into the Court’s refusal which makes it the first attempt at defining that distinction. As the Court President himself put it to the Commission’s lawyers in Pfizer’s appeal: “Normally I would not intervene, but do you really mean that? Does the public not have an obvious interest in verifying the neutrality of the officials dealing with such an important matter as the one here in issue?
What seems obvious is that this standard applies not only to Commission officials, but a fortiori to the Court itself. Doesn’t it?
That’s the question the Ombudsman’s inquiry can’t fully answer. It may settle whether financial declarations count as “judicial” or “administrative” documents, but the deeper one, unintentionally posed by the Court’s own President, remains: if verifying impartiality really is the essence of transparency, the Court can’t be the one exception to its own rule.
Read the full article by media partners: Follow the Money EU EUobserver Le Monde Le Soir taz Público Publico.es