European Law Moot Court Competition (ELMC) – Edition 2026/2027

European Union law emerged from the post-war project of European integration, beginning with the 1951 Treaty of Paris establishing the European Coal and Steel Community and the 1957 Treaties of Rome creating the European Economic Community and Euratom. Through landmark rulings of the Court of Justice — notably Van Gend en Loos (1963), which established direct effect, and Costa v. ENEL (1964), which articulated the primacy of EU law over national law — the legal order evolved from an intergovernmental arrangement into an autonomous supranational system binding on Member States and their citizens. Successive treaties (Single European Act 1986, Maastricht 1992, Amsterdam 1997, Nice 2001, and Lisbon 2009) expanded competences into the internal market, monetary union, justice and home affairs, and foreign policy, while the Charter of Fundamental Rights acquired binding force in 2009. The core architecture today rests on the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), supplemented by secondary legislation (regulations, directives, decisions) and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg. Central doctrines include direct effect, supremacy, sincere cooperation, proportionality, and the protection of fundamental rights. The preliminary reference procedure under Article 267 TFEU remains the principal mechanism through which national courts and the CJEU dialogue to ensure uniform interpretation. The four freedoms — goods, persons, services, and capital — and EU competition law continue to anchor the internal market. Contemporary debates focus on rule-of-law backsliding in certain Member States and the conditionality mechanism upheld in C-156/21 and C-157/21; tensions with national constitutional courts following the German Bundesverfassungsgericht's PSPP ruling and the Polish Constitutional Tribunal's K 3/21 decision; the post-Brexit legal relationship under the Withdrawal Agreement and Trade and Cooperation Agreement; the digital and green transitions through instruments such as the Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, AI Act, and the European Green Deal; and the EU's evolving approach to asylum, migration, and external action, including sanctions regimes adopted in response to Russia's aggression against Ukraine.