10.15166/2499-8249/397
https://www.europeanpapers.eu/en/europeanforum/between-rock-hard-place-court-justice-judgment-case-slovenia-croatia
2499-8249
Kassoti, Eva
Eva
Kassoti
T.M.C. Asser Institute
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Court of Justice's Judgment in Case Slovenia v. Croatia
European Papers (www.europeanpapers.eu)
2020
territory
arbitration agreement
arbitration award
subject matter of the dispute
res judicata effects
international law
2020-10-28
Research Centre for European Law, Unitelma Sapienza - University of Rome
eng
European Forum Insight
text/html
PDF
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2020 5(2), 1061-1070
European Forum Insight of 28 October 2020
I. Introduction. - II. Judgment of the Court. - III. Analysis and comment. - III.1. The subject matter of the action and the (ir)relevance of European Schools. - III.2. The effects of the final arbitral award within the EU legal order. - IV. Conclusions.
The Slovenia v. Croatia case is a complex and politically charged one. Here, the Court of Justice was indirectly called upon to pronounce on the legal effects of an international arbitral award delimiting the territorial and maritime boundary between two Member States - the validity of which remains fiercely contested by one of the parties. This Insight analyses the Court of Justice's reasoning in the case at hand and argues that, although the Court was arguably caught between a rock and a hard place, its misconstruction of the subject matter of the action and its failure to engage with the res judicata effects of the arbitral award within the EU legal order weaken the persuasive force of its line of argumentation.