The Centre of European Law is delighted to host Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union, Tamara Ćapeta, to deliver the Centre's 49th Annual Lecture, External Relations in the CJEU: is there room for a political question doctrine?

EU External Relations Law at the CJEU – is there room for a political question doctrine

It is the constitutional duty of the Court of Justice to ensure that EU institutions abide by the law, including international law. International agreements to which the Union is a party as well as customary international law form part of the EU legal order and bind the EU institutions. This is a constitutional choice expressed in Article 216(2) TFEU and confirmed by the case law of the Court of Justice.

Nevertheless, in some cases, the Court refrained from exercising its judicial review duty, especially when required to assess the conformity of EU acts with WTO law. That case law, as well as solutions adopted in some other areas of EU law, such as the common foreign and security policy, raise the question whether the Court should develop some kind of a political question doctrine.

This is an in-person event and we warmly welcome all with an interest in EU Law to join us for this important annual event for the Centre and its wider communities. Refreshments will be provided with a drinks reception to follow Advocate General Ćapeta's lecture.

Speaker bio

Born in 1967 in Zagreb (Croatia), Ms Tamara Ćapeta began her studies at the Sveučilište u Zagrebu (University of Zagreb, Croatia), from which she graduated with a diploma in law in 1991. She pursued her studies at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium) where she was awarded a Master's degree in Advanced European Studies in 1993. Back at the Sveučilište u Zagrebu, she undertook a PhD and became a doctor of law in 2001.

Ms Ćapeta began her professional career in 1992 as a civil servant within the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the Department for European Integration and the Department for UN Agencies with a seat in Europe. From 1994 to 1997 she conducted research on the European integration process at the Institut za razvoj i međunarodne odnose (Institute for Development and International Relations, Croatia).

She began her academic career in 1997 as a university assistant in the Department of Commercial Law and International Trade at the Faculty of Economics of the Sveučilište u Zagrebu. Since 2002, she has been a professor at the Faculty of Law of the Sveučilište u Zagrebu, where she was one of the founding members of the Department of European Public Law.

In 2013, Ms Ćapeta was appointed Head of the Croatian Language Translation Unit at the Directorate-General for Multilingualism of the Court of Justice of the European Union, resuming her teaching activities at the Sveučilište u Zagrebu in 2014. From 2015 to 2021, she served as Head of the Department of European Public Law and as Director of the Postgraduate Programme in European Law there. In 2018, she founded the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, which is dedicated to research on the rule of law, and served as its coordinator from 2018 to 2021.

Ms Ćapeta is the author of numerous publications in the field of EU law. She is the founder of an international journal on EU law, the only one in existence to date in Croatia, and was its editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2015. In parallel with her teaching activities at the Sveučilište u Zagrebu, she was Visiting scholar of EU Law at the Indiana University School of Law Exchange Program (United States) between 2005 and 2010, and then in 2016 at the University of Pittsburgh (United States) and at Zhōngguó Zhèngfǎ Dàxué (China University of Political Science and Law, China). She also teaches Croatian judges and civil servants as part of continuing professional development programmes on EU law organised by the Pravosudna akademija (Judicial Academy, Croatia) and the Državna škola za javnu upravu (State School of Public Administration, Croatia).

In 2020, Ms Ćapeta was appointed by a joint committee of the European Union to serve as a member of the arbitration panel under the UK Withdrawal Agreement, a role she ceased to occupy further to her appointment as Advocate General at the Court of Justice.

Ms Tamara Ćapeta was appointed as Advocate General at the Court of Justice on 7 October 2021.