CJEU Decision C- 107/23 PPU: Protection of the EU Financial Interests and the National Principle of †Lex Mitiorâ€

The CJEU decision C-107/23 PPU of July 24, 2023 creates two large categories of legal problems: a first category from the perspective of Union law and a second category from the perspective of domestic law. The European perspective is of less interest for the present analysis, but at least two elements that are closely related and which we will develop on another occasion should be emphasized: (i) the amplification of the tendency to relax the conditions necessary to recognize the direct effect of European norms and (ii) the assumption by the CJEU of a role of judicial review. From the perspective of national law, the Lin judgment seems impossible to implement. The substance of the opposition to the national law system or a significant part of it comes, most likely, first from considerations intrinsic to the decision and only then from reasons related to the limits of the supremacy of EU law. Recently, a similar solution was adopted by the CJEU through the Ordinance of 9 January 2024 in case C-131/23, the only difference from case C-107/23 being that the interpretation of the CJEU took into account Decision 2006/928/EC of The Commission of December 13, 2006 establishing a cooperation mechanism and verifying the progress achieved by Romania in order to achieve certain specific reference objectives in the field of judicial system reform and the fight against corruption.