Per aspera ad astra: Application of the Law of the Eurasian Economic Union by the Courts of the Russian Federation
The law of integration organization is applied by both its judicial body and the courts of its Member States. The plurality of actors leads to the necessity to determine the subject competent to interpret the law; develop approaches to the interaction between the integration court and the courts of the states and to synchronize the proceedings in these courts. The use of induction and the analysis of separate cases examined by the Russian courts, allows to reveal patterns of application of the EAEU in the Russian legal system. The retrospective method allows to follow the transformation of the Russian courts’ approach to the application of EAEU law and the case law of the EAEU Court. On the example of on the application of the Eurasian Economic Union law by the Russian courts, the methodological approaches to the interpretation of the integration organization law and its application in the national legal systems have been determined; the scientific concept ofjudicial dialogue has been developed; proposals regarding the modification of EAEU law in order to create an institutionalized link between the EAEU Court and the courts of its Member States have been formulated. EAEU law is consistently interpreted and applied by the courts of its Member States taking into account the principle of supremacy of the integration organization’s legal order and with the use of the legal findings previously formulated by the EAEU Court in other cases. This allows to partially compensate the absence of the preliminary reference procedure and assert that a judicial dialogue is taking shape. The Russian case law incorporated both the legal findings of the EAEU Court that were formulated in cases regarding the application of specific areas of integration law, mostly in the field of customs regulation, and universal legal findings concerning, above all, the protection of human rights. The author suggests to overcome the problematic aspects of the interaction between judicial bodies linked to the fact that the possibility of review of a national courts’ judgment in which it applied an EAEU act that has been subsequently found to be not in line with the EAEU law by itscourt by modifying the Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union.