The Court of Justice of the European Union and the International Criminal Court. The Fight against Impunity between Complementarity and Mandatory Requirements

: In its recent case law, the CJEU has significantly contributed to the international struggle against impunity. This contribution was made possible by the use of two interpretative techniques. The first one consists in enlarging the scope of EU law when the application of a domestic procedural provision may directly or indirectly prevent a national trial. The second technique consists in narrowing down the scope of EU law when application of an EU provision granting individual rights may directly or indirectly prevent a national criminal proceeding from starting or being carried on. Surprisingly, analogous techniques of interpretation of the scope of the Rome Statute have been used by the International Criminal Court in order to encourage national jurisdictions to start, and to carry on, criminal trials. In the last part, the Chapter will try to make sense of the recent case law of the Court of Justice on the fight against impunity in the frame of the doctrine of mandatory requirements. For this purpose, the final section will give an insight on the balancing methodology used by the Court of Justice and on the competing interests and values at stake.