Introduction

Abstract

The European Commission uses administrative acts to interfere with domestic policy application in a legally binding way. By initiating annulment litigation against supranational administrative acts, governments can effectively subject such interferences to judicial review and thereby judicialize compliance conflicts with the Commission. The question at the heart of this study is when and why governments use this instrument. From the “integration through law” perspective, this is particularly puzzling, since national governments have had little to gain within the EU’s judicial arena. This study argues that governmental litigation can be a form of legal activism by national governments hoping to provoke judicial law-making. The phenomenon of governments actively turning to the Court of Justice can therefore be integrated into the “integration through law” perspective.