http://dx.doi.org/10.17176/20181005-150210-0 https://staging.verfassungsblog.de/a-constitutional-defense-of-cjeu-opinion-213-on-eu-accession-to-the-echr-and-the-way-forward/ A Constitutional Defense of CJEU Opinion 2/13 on EU Accession to the ECHR (and the way forward) Halberstam, Daniel eng 2015-03-12 electronic resource text/html ddc:342 Verfassungsblog Verfassungsblog--2366-7044 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 The Court of Justice of the European Union has arrived! Gone are the days of hagiography, when in the eyes of the academy the Court could do no wrong. The judicial darling, if there is one today, is Strasbourg not Luxembourg. Only hours after Opinion 2/13 struck down the Draft Agreement on EU Accession to the European Convention on Human Rights, scholars condemned the opinion as “exceptionally poor.” Critical voices mounted ever since, leading to nothing short of widespread “outrage.” I disagree with the critics. In my legal analysis and constitutional reconstruction the Court’s concerns are mostly warranted. I also identify the changes that must be – and reasonably can be – made to move accession forward. Finally, and in a twist of irony, I show that one of the Court’s greatest concerns – mutual trust – goes to the very survival of the Union and demands not an exemption, but full accession.