This article investigates selected contradictory procedural arrangements in France and Poland to establish how they can all operate under the same European rule-of-law standards. Building on the theoretical framework of procedural formalism and on the Polish and French highest administrative courts’ case law on the procedural question of whether court staff can produce certain documents and copies thereof in place of a party to court administrative proceedings, the authors portray diversified, and sometimes even contradictory, approaches to procedural formalism, which testifies to inconsistent understanding and implementation of rule-of-law standards in proceedings before administrative courts in both countries.

This article traces how the Court of Justice of the European Union has developed a doctrinal framework for EU sanctions against Russia under Regulation (EU) No 269/2014. This case law forms a coherent body of reasoning reconciling post-Soviet legacies with contemporary geopolitical imperatives and evidential rigour. By refining the meaning and temporal scope of accountability within the listing criteria, the Court defines the vocabulary guiding asset-freezing decisions and maps Russia’s interwoven networks of power, capital, and state influence. This case law reveals a gap between law and societal expectations of justice, leaving unaddressed the enduring post-Soviet privileges underpinning Putin’s regime.

Focusing on two themes—the consistency of cross-border EPPO investigations and the legitimacy of the resulting evidence—this article re-evaluates concepts set out in key documents on the EPPO’s establishment; critically analyses the implications of G. K. and Others and Gavanozov for evidence-gathering under Union law; and sets out two courses of action to address key issues. The first provides ideas for a more precise definition of EPPO investigative powers. In the absence of the necessary political will, the second sets out theoretical and practical arguments for the use of EIOs and JITs within the current legal framework.

This article examines the new provisions on contract interpretation and characterisation in Book 5 of the Belgian Civil Code, which entered into force on 1 January 2023. The reform preserves Belgium’s traditional subjective approach to interpretation, prioritising the parties’ common intention over literal textual meaning, contrasting with the objective or mixed approaches adopted by French law and international instruments. Regarding characterisation, Belgium introduces innovative provisions explicitly addressing contract classification and mixed contracts, filling gaps left by other legal systems. These aspects of the Belgian reform are put intto perspective with comparative observations drawn mostly from French, German, and Dutch law.

This article illuminates the powerful role of law in shaping the EU’s political economy. I argue that the neo-liberal architecture and, ultimately, the lack of a socio-economic equilibrium ingrained in the EU legal framework and in the (case) law of the ECJ are crucial with regard to their effects on the political and (socio-)economic spheres. Solutions to this and the restoration of socio-economic balance are limited. As Treaty change seems unrealistic, I argue that the Court should develop a new (self-)understanding that replaces the ‘integration through law’ paradigm with something that could be understood as ‘integration sustained by law’.

The primacy of EU law as framed by the Court of Justice pre-empts substantive arguments of principle that originate in other legal orders. This was accepted and acceptable to the extent that the values EU law contained were at least normatively equivalent to values originated from the other legal orders. In this contribution it is argued that this is no longer the case and that the misuse of the Rule of Law rhetoric justifying the primacy of EU law renders the EU less accountable and undermines the dialogical pluralist essence of EU constitutionalism.