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Publishers Abstract:
On Jul 2, 2012 the Spanish Constitutional Court delivered a landmark decision concerning the relationship between EU law remedies before national courts and the recurso de amparo. Judgment 145/2012 is relevant on many counts, but mostly because it confirms the Spanish Constitutional Court's willingness to supervise the correct application of EU law by Spanish ordinary courts. The judgment thus goes beyond the traditional debate on the constitutional protection of the obligation to make preliminary references to the European Court of Justice, and shifts the focus towards a more substantive dimension: the terms in which Spanish ordinary courts apply substantive EU law, as previously interpreted by the ECJ, and the remedies guaranteed by the Constitution in case of (national) judicial error. Constitutional courts have realized that indifference or hostility towards European integration are losing strategies. The risk of institutional isolation and the daunting possibility of being forced to reconsider previous hostile decisions, have contributed to catalyse a change of approach.
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