In an earlier blog post, I criticized Advocate General Ćapeta’s opinion in KS and KD for its failure to take seriously the principle of conferral and the Treaty text. In this post, I look more closely at AG Ćapeta’s opinion in Neves 77 Solutions, in which she further developed and applied the suggestion she had made in KS and KD that, by adopting Articles 24 TEU and 275 TFEU, the Treaty framers intended to introduce a political question doctrine into EU law. I think it is both unlikely that the Court will embrace the AG’s suggestion and believe it would be undesirable to do so.

Last week, Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni announced Italy had made an agreement with Albania that would allow Italy to set up camps on Albanian territory. Asylum seekers rescued at sea by Italian ships would be sent to Albania, where their asylum claims would be processed. If a claim is accepted, the refugee is allowed to enter Italy. If it is rejected, the individual would be sent back to his or her country of origin.

On October 23rd, 2023, the Council adopted the Anti-Coercion Instrument. The adoption by the Council comes a couple of weeks after the European Parliament formally gave its consent to the instrument on October 3rd. The Council’s press release states that the regulation will be signed on November 22nd. Assuming the regulation will be published in the Official Journal on that same day, it will enter into force on December 12th, 2023. In this blog post, I look at the Anti-Coercion Instrument from the perspective of democratic accountability. I will make the case that a unilateral trade instrument as political as the Anti-Coercion Instrument needs strong democratic control mechanisms. Such mechanisms are lacking.