The Principle of Mutual Trust in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. Analysis of Selected Case Law

The paper concerns the principle of mutual trust and its interpretation by the Court of Justice of the European Union as well as two other important European courts: the European Court of Human Rights and the German Constitutional Court. The paper presents the important change of direction in interpretation of the principle of mutual trust by the CJEU. Initially, the belief in the existence of mutual trust between member states was firm. Over time, however, it has turned out that even in the EU – which follows from a number of judgments of the ECtHR – violations of human rights sometimes happen. This dramatically undermines trust in foreign judicial systems. This led the CJEU to the conclusion that the principle of mutual trust is rebuttable and that in some circumstances limitations to the principles of mutual recognition and mutual trust can be made. This conclusion can be treated as an answer in the specific ‘judicial dialogue’ of the CJEU with the ECtHR and the German Constitutional Court – the two latter courts seemed to notice earlier that mutual trust between member states cannot be blind and unconditional.