Effective Judicial Protection of EU Law and Romanian Courts: Winding Through Res Judicata and State Liability

Effective judicial protection of EU law is a tool that has been devised by the case law of the ecj and then codified into EU treaties, but matching judicial remedies are still sought, both at supranational and at national level. While State liability enjoys the favors of the ecj at supranational level, some Member States have conceived special remedies that go as far as to challenge res judicata in order to protect substantive rights conferred to individuals by EU law. This paper presents the special remedy created by Romanian law, which allows re-opening of final court decisions if primacy of EU law has been disregarded, as examined by the ecj. It is our conclusion that, in the absence of legal harmonization in the area of procedural law, res judicata remains a powerful tool in the hands of national courts and the effective protection of EU substantive rights is still in search of a remedy more efficient than the theoretical state liability.