RES JUDICATA IN EUROPEAN UNION LAW

The concept of res judicata was introduced into European Community law very early on by the European Court of Justice and it remains anessential component both of EU procedural law and of the interactionsbetween national procedural systems and EU law. It is a fascinatingexample of the inluence of comparative law on the ECJ and of thisinstitutions normative powers. It is also at the heart of manyconflicts with national courts, as EU law requires restrictions tonational understandings of the scope of rules ensuring the finality of judicial decisions. Several recent judgments of the ECJ demonstratethat the issue remains important but also that litigants - andsometimes the Court itself - are not sufficiently aware of the rulesestablished in the case law. A well-known and fundamentalcharacteristic of any procedural system, this concept remainsunder-studied in EU law.