The monopoly of dispute settlement under Art. 344 TFEU
The monopoly of dispute settlement maintained by the EU courts under Art. 344 TFEU obliges the Member States to settle disputes concerning the interpretation or application of the Treaties by no other means than the ones provided for in the latter and thereby strengthens the jurisdictional order of competences within the EU. Here, the Court sees a danger for this order. Art. 5 of the draft agreement provided that proceedings of the Member States before the CJEU ought not to be considered as proceedings in the sense of Art. 55 ECHR (para 201 ff.). Nonetheless, based on Art. 33 ECHR EU Member States would still have the possibility to start proceedings against other Member States or the EU itself. Even the mere existence of this possibility does not comply with Art. 344 TFEU in the eyes of the Court and would be incompatible with the latter provision’s exclusive character (paras 208 and 212). This tension can only be resolved by means of an express exclusion of the competence of the ECtHR under Art. 33 ECHT for disputes between EU Member States or between them and the EU which concern the application of the ECHR within the scope ratione materiae of EU law (para 213).