Can governments influence the ideological direction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) through judicial appointments? How does the internal allocation of responsibilities, such as the assignment of reporting judges, affect CJEU decisions? These questions have been difficult to answer given that the CJEU does not reveal individual positions. We capture the internal decision making process with a simple model in which a reporting judge proposes a draft judgment to a panel, which then votes on it. The model illustrates the conditions under which both the ideological preferences of the median and the reporter judge influence Court decisions. We test the implications of the model using all state aid annulment cases against EU decisions brought either by private litigants or governments in the 1995-2020 period. We find that as the median judge is appointed by a more left-wing government, the Court becomes more likely to rule in favour of state aid. The ideological preferences of the reporting judge also shape Court decisions. These findings shed new light on both the judicial behaviour of the Court and its alleged neoliberal bias.
