Judicial media power? Transparency and communication at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)

This paper discusses how the the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) responds to calls for institutional transparency by issuing media artefacts that it produces itself as an independent media actor. The paper hypothesises that the CJEU’s judicial communication, i.e. the production of artefacts such as press releases, is a factual (i.e. non-legal) dimension of judicial power that can potentially strengthen the authority of the Court both within the institutional architecture of the EU and in relation to civil society more generally. The paper then proceeds to discuss the framework of transparency and openness that regulates the CJEU’s information and communication obligations and how the Court responds to those obligations. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted with the Court’s media officers in the spring of 2023, I conclude that a multi-layered and ‘incoherent’ regulatory framework provides the CJEU with a flexible toolbox with which it can legitimise a ‘managed openness’ that may be considerably more restricted than what the EU’s fundamental values and basic principles on institutional transparency would seem to require.