The EU-Turkey Statement and the Structure of Legal Accountability

This chapter looks at the EU-Turkey Statement (hereafter ‘the Statement’) and the CJEU rulings on the Statement from a legal theory perspective. It seeks to better understand the obstacles and opportunities for legal accountability. The chapter looks at the Statement through the lens of Carl Schmitt’s critique of international law during the interbellum. Schmitt’s observations will help to highlight three problematic features of the Statement from the perspective of legal accountability: (i) exerting influence but declining legal authority, (ii) seemingly benign and innocuous legal concepts used for geopolitical purposes and (iii) absence of an independent institution determining the meaning of the legal concepts. Triggered by Schmitt’s observations, the chapter probes deeper into the types of powers deployed by the EU in the context of the Statement. To this end, the chapter uses Christopher Hood’s tools of government as an analytical framework. For each tool, I will indicate whether it constitutes an obstacle or an opportunity for legal accountability. At first glance, it seems that the EU is not using law in the context of the Statement, which explains why it can also elude legal accountability. Upon closer scrutiny, we may actually find that the EU is using more law than meets the eye when executing the Statement. This may offer an opportunity for holding the EU legally accountable in the future, namely at the level of the Commission decisions to fund external actions such as the EU-Turkey Statement.