The ‘judicialization’ of Emergency : the case of the Eurozone crisis

The paper deals with the role played by the judiciary during the Eurozone crisis, comparing the attitudes of national supreme courts (in Portugal, Italy, Greece, Latvia and Romania) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in judging austerity measures adopted under emergency circumstances. While at national level supreme courts have played a key role in fundamental rights protection, trying to safeguard the constitutional order’s core values in moments of extraordinary circumstances, the latter - until the Ledra Advertising case - avoided judging the legitimacy of the bailout measures, which therefore represents a sort of black hole in the EU legal framework. The paper highlights the paradigmatic nature of the Euro crisis as a global crisis that involves national, supranational, and international settings and sheds light on the different attitudes of the Courts within the broader context of the persistent flaws of EU economic governance.