CYIL Vol. 4, 2013

WHEN THE SUIT DOESN’T SUIT THEM: JURISDICTIONAL IMMUNITIES OF STATES… In case of conflict with the essential features of the EU legal order, the CJEU would probably opt for a fairly narrow concept of jurisdictional immunity, which might go even further than the current restrictive concept in international law. In other words, it cannot be excluded that the Court might disregard the international law obligations in favour of safeguarding the essential principles of EU law and the fundamental rights protection in a situation which falls within the scope of EU law. However, it is important to stress that in its case-law so far, the CJEU has always fully respected the international law principles of jurisdictional immunity and was well aware of the ICJ jurisprudence, as was demonstrated in case C-466/11 Curra . This was no doubt facilitated by the clear tendency in international law to depart from an absolute to a restricted concept of jurisdictional immunity, which in turn enables the CJEU to comply with the international law obligations which the Union should respect.

the effectiveness of EU law in the territory of EU Member States. This primacy (precedence) of EU law would arguably also apply to any conflicting rules of international law, when the international law obligation would infringe essential principles of EU legal order (see note 17 supra ).