Article 47 of the Charter in the Opinion procedure

peer reviewedThis paper affirms that external relations are outside the scope of Article 47 of the Charter. This does not however mean that the principle of judicial protection and the right of access to an independent tribunal have only an internal EU law dimension. In Opinion 1/17, The Court of Justice could assess the CETA’s compatibility with the right of access to an independent tribunal without having recourse to Article 47 of the Charter, on the ground either of the principle of autonomy or of the compatibility with the substantive provisions of the common commercial policy. This paper argues that while judicial protection as part of the autonomy claim could meet some conceptual limits, promoting judicial protection as part of the common commercial policy could reinforce the perception that the Union is a credible and influential actor in international trade and in international procedural law