A new research article by Dr Dovilė Pūraitė-Andrikienė of the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences (LSMC), entitled “Constitutional Supremacy without Conflict: Lithuania’s Constitutional Court and EU Law”, has been published in the international open-access journal “Access to Justice in Eastern Europe”.

The relationship between the supremacy of national constitutions and the primacy of EU law remains a central challenge of European constitutionalism. In some European countries, this relationship has generated significant constitutional tensions. But is conflict inevitable? The article examines the Lithuanian Constitutional Court’s approach to EU law since Lithuania joined the EU in 2004. It focuses on the constitutional doctrine governing the relationship between the Constitution and EU law, the Court’s two preliminary references to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and the growing importance of EU law and CJEU case law in constitutional interpretation. The article argues that Lithuania offers a distinctive model of constitutional accommodation, demonstrating that constitutional supremacy and EU law primacy can coexist through judicial dialogue and cooperation rather than confrontation. The article also considers critical assessments of this model, including questions about the limits of judicial dialogue, the Constitutional Court’s role, and potential tensions between constitutional supremacy and the primacy of EU law.

The full open-access article is available here: https://ajee-journal.com/constitutional-supremacy-without-conflict-lithuania-s-constitutional-court-and-eu-law