European Union Court of Justice Series: Interview with Advocate General Juliane Kokott

Episode #13 December 08, 2025
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Berkeley Law’s Borderlines podcast host, Professor Katerina Linos, and guest co-host, Professor Mark Pollack (Temple University), conduct a special interview series profiling Judges and Advocates General serving at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Luxembourg.

Episode #13 of the Borderlines CJEU Series features CJEU Advocate General Juliane Kokott in conversation with Professor Katerina Linos and Professor Mark Pollack (Temple University). Appointed as an Advocate General to the Court of Justice in 2003 – the third woman in the history of the CJEU to hold this position – Advocate General Kokott discusses her robust academic career prior to joining the Court, touching upon how her breadth of academic experiences, and time in American legal academia, has impacted her career as a whole. She served as First Advocate General at the Court of Justice from 2006 to 2007, and has delivered nearly 700 case opinions as of this episode’s publication.

Listeners will then hear about an array of cases which highlight the breadth of matters encountered by the Court. Among the cases discussed are: Commission v. Ireland, which illustrated the Court’s role in regulating an industry with major U.S. firms; Achbita v. G4S, which dealt with whether employees were permitted to wear religious garments in the workplace; and C.D. v. S.T., which considered whether the Pregnant Workers Directive awarded certain rights in the case of surrogacy. 

Additionally, listeners will come away with a better understanding of the role of the Advocate General, as Advocate General Kokott provides unique insights into topics such as the importance of the Advocate General’s published opinions. Finally, listeners will hear Advocate General Kokott’s perspective on the Court’s enlargement and shift away from reviewing technical matters, which are, in her view, the two most important changes that have occurred in the Court over her tenure.

Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Advocate General Kokott studied law at the University of Bonn and the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and went on to complete an LL.M. at American University in Washington, DC. In addition, she was awarded a diploma from the Académie Internationale de Droit Constitutionnel [International Academy of International Law], which is based in Tunis. Her career in academia began with an appointment as a Visiting Professor for European [then-Community] Union Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Subsequently, Advocate General Kokott became a Professor of German and Foreign Public Law, International Law, and European Law at the University of Augsburg. She served as both a Professor and Director of the Institute for European and International Business Law at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and has taught at the Universities of Mannheim, Augsburg and Düsseldorf. She also worked for the German government, which appointed her as an alternate judge to the international Court of Conciliation and Arbitration of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Until 2003, she was Deputy Chairwoman of Germany’s Federal Government Advisory Council on Global Environmental Change.

Among many honors, Advocate General Kokott was awarded the Dr. Otto Schmidt Prize for the Promotion of the Europeanization and Internationalization of Law in 2019, and in 2022, she earned honorary doctorates from both the University of Augsburg and the University of Liège.

Cases and sources mentioned in the podcast:

  • Link to the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court of Germany)

https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/EN/Home/home_node.html

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2011-10/cp110102en.pdf
https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=110361&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6859199
https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=84317&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6857611

https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=82589&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6878993

  • Link to Council Directive 2004/113/EC of December 13, 2004 implementing the principle of equal treatment between men and women in the access to and supply of goods and services (as referenced in the Test-Achats case)
    https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32004L0113
  • Links to press release for judgment and Advocate General Kokott and Advocate General Wahl’s opinions in cases C-167/12, D. v. S.T. and C-363/12 Z. v. A Government Department and the Board of Management of a Community School

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-03/cp140036en.pdf

https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=142184&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6862098

https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=142181&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6862460

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2017-03/cp170030en.pdf

https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=179082&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6859757

  • Link to European Court of Human Rights case of A.S. v. France

https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-145466%22]}

  • Links to press release and Advocate General Pitruzzella’s opinion for C-465/20 P, Commission v. Ireland and Others

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2024-09/cp240133en.pdf
https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=279499&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6863571

  • Links to press release for judgment and Advocate General Emiliou’s opinion in joined cases C-611/22 P, C-625/22 P, Illumina-Grail Merger

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2024-09/cp240127en.pdf
https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=284097&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6865143

  • Links to press release and Advocate General Kokott’s opinion for C-48/22 P, Google Shopping case

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2024-09/cp240135en.pdf
https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=281162&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6865817

  • Article 102 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (as referenced in Google Shopping)

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A12008E102

  • Link to the Treaty of Lisbon – Fact Sheet provided by the European Union

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/5/the-treaty-of-lisbon

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2018-02/cp180020en.pdf

https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=190793&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6386995

  • Link to Advocate General Ćapeta’s opinion in case C-769/22, Commission v. Hungary (Valeurs de l’Union)

https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=300973&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=6386995

Selected speeches and publication for further research:

 

Citation: Linos, Katerina and Pollack, Mark. Episode #13: Interview with Advocate General Juliane Kokott. Borderlines podcast, European Union Court of Justice Series (December 8, 2025).
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/podcast-episode/european-union-court-of-justice-series-interview-with-advocate-general-juliane-kokott/

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Episode Transcript

Advocate General Juliane Kokott Interview

Katerina Linos: Welcome to Borderlines. I’m Katerina Linos, the Michael Heyman Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.

Mark Pollack: And I’m Mark Pollack, Freaney Professor of Political Science and Law and Jean Monnet Chair at Temple University.

Katerina Linos: This is our series of interviews conducted in summer and winter 2024 with the Judges and Advocates General of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg.

Little is known about the backgrounds, careers, and personalities of the key decision-makers on Europe’s highest court, and we hope to create an archive to shed light on these jurists.

In today’s episode, we speak with Advocate General Juliane Kokott of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Advocate General Kokott brings extensive experience to her role and unique insights into the Court’s evolving mission. Our conversation covers remarkable breadth. We discuss major cases like Commission v. Ireland, which shows the Court regulating technology industries dominated by American firms. We explore Achbita v. G4S examining whether employees can wear religious garments at work.

These cases illustrate the wide range of issues the Court encounters daily. Advocate General Kokott explains her distinctive role as an Advocate General in the judicial process of the CJEU. Her published opinions are followed by the Court in 80-plus percent of cases. She describes how these opinions foster transparency by keeping the public informed at early stages of the proceeding.

She also reveals how the reporting judges and Advocates General often come from different legal cultures to ensure diverse perspectives.

Mark Pollack: Advocate General Kokott, welcome to Borderlines. We have so much that we want to ask you about, but we like to start by asking Members of the Court how they made their way first to European law and then to the Court of Justice. So, if I can start with this, how did you make your way into European law? Did you start your legal studies with an ambition to be an EU law specialist or did that come with time?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: When I went to school, I was very much interested in foreign languages and foreign cultures. That continued at the University. Therefore, I studied public international law and comparative law and European law. I went to the Académie Internationale de La Haye, studying public international law, and the Académie de Droit Internationale Comparé, and the Académie de Droit Constitutionnel Comparé, Tunis. And then I studied not only in Germany, but also in Switzerland – Geneva, French-speaking Switzerland – at American University in Washington, at the Harvard Law School, and also became a Visiting Professor at Berkeley, to my pleasure. I was at the Max Planck Institute for German and Foreign Public Law and International Law. I was involved in the foundation of the Journal of International Constitutional Courts. I organized plenty of conferences with international participation and moot courts in international public law and European law. When I was a law professor, I visited the Court of Justice with my students, and I also, as a law professor, pleaded the Marshall case on affirmative action for women before the Court of Justice.

The then-Advocate General did not follow me, so I thought that I would lose the case, but then the Court of Justice followed me, and not its Advocate General, exceptionally, and allowed that kind of affirmative action for women. So now I’m at the Court of Justice, and it seems a perfect accomplishment of my path.

Katerina Linos: I’m particularly interested in your experience at Berkeley and your experience with American legal academia. You had so many stops in your career, but is there anything about that set of experiences – your doctorate at Harvard – that has influenced how you think about the law or that seemed novel at the time and is now part of your thinking?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: First of all, the training in the United States helped me to be more self-competent. I learned that also young people could have good ideas and not only law professors. And then it broadened my horizon and allowed me to become a better lawyer. And it also sharpened my sensibility for separation of power issues and the limits of judicial power.

Mark Pollack: Now on the Court, you serve in the position of Advocate General, which is a vitally important position but one that’s poorly understood, I think, outside of Europe and even among many EU citizens who are experts in the workings of the Court. So, I wonder if you could tell our listeners a bit about the role of Advocate General in the life of the Court and in your experience.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: The Advocate General at the Court is modeled on the French system, and there, the Advocates General are called rapporteurs publics, which means public reporters. The Chambers at the Court have a reporting judge, whose draft serves as a basis for the deliberations of the Chamber, plus, they have the opinion of the Advocate General.

So, it’s kind of a second rapporteur and one whose opinion is published. This helps the other judges in the Chamber. They have two documents, two proposals, how to decide: the draft of the Juge Rapporteur, which is an internal document, plus the published opinion of the Advocate General. The Advocate General’s opinion is published months before the judgment is handed down.

The opinion is much more elaborated, as it is a published document, than the reporting judge’s draft, which is internal. The Advocates have a little bit more time to study the files and reflect on them, because they sit only in their cases. Judges sit as reporting judges and as associate judges. Plus, they spend time in deliberations. The Advocates General do not participate in the deliberations of the Court.

In addition, the published opinions contribute to the transparence of judging. The public is informed at an earlier stage about what the judges deliberate and how they will probably decide. The Court follows its Advocate General in about 80 or 85 percent of the cases.

Finally, the reporting judge and the Advocate General usually come from two different legal cultures. This way, different perspectives are integrated into the judgment. All in all, I think that the Advocates General are particularly useful within the Court of Justice.

Mark Pollack: I have never heard the thing you just said about the two different legal cultures. Is that a deliberate policy of the First Advocate General to try and get an Advocate General from a different culture or does it just work out that way?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: I think it’s a long-standing practice of the Court, a long-standing and reasonable practice.

Mark Pollack: Ah, fascinating.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: Mm-hmm.

Mark Pollack: So related to this question is the style in which Advocate General opinions are written. You already mentioned the fact that they tend to be more elaborated than the more, let’s say, stylistically cramped judgments. How do you think about the style of your own judgments, especially compared with the style in which judges write their collective decisions?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: I try to be as clear and as readable as possible, and that also means not to be overly lengthy, even in complicated cases. I always had a passion already at school for clear and elegant language. I also think that consistency and intelligibility of opinions and judgments are vital for the acceptance of the Court.

Mark Pollack: One more question about your experiences as Advocate General. You have the unique role, as you mentioned, of formulating and delivering your individual opinions that are publicly associated with you. I believe it was Joseph Weiler who said that being Advocate General is both the best and the worst job at the Court. It’s the best job because you can speak in your own voice. But on the other hand, you are publicly associated with your opinion in a way that judges, even judge rapporteurs, are not necessarily.

I’m curious to hear how the visibility of your individual opinions, and we’ll come to some of those in a little while, has shaped your experience at the Court. And, how you navigate the attention and the public scrutiny that comes with publishing an opinion on a high-profile case maybe with large economic consequences or legal consequences, particularly because you’ve been reappointed multiple times to the Court. How do you experience that public scrutiny?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: I think Advocate General is only the best job. [Laughter] And I just don’t think about navigating around public opinion. I just try to write good opinions, paying attention to each single sentence and word as far as possible. And that’s all I can do to my opinion.

Katerina Linos: So, I wanted to ask about Germany. You come from a country that historically has been leading the European Union, but that has a Constitutional Court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, that has sometimes disagreed and recently clashed with the Court of Justice. Could you talk briefly about what it’s like to be a member of these two communities – a member of the European law community, part of the German legal judicial community– and how that relationship has evolved recently?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: I think it’s not unusual that lawyers disagree. There is a German saying, “Two lawyers, three opinions.” [Laughter] And as to your specific question, it’s probably easier for me to comprehend German doctrinal approaches and analysis.

Mark Pollack: In your many years on the Court, you’ve offered opinions in a wide variety of cases. We’d like to ask you about just a few of those. And I confess we struggled to pick among the many that we could have asked you about to give the listeners a sense of the range of cases you’ve dealt with and how you reached your opinions in each of them. And I think we’ll start with actually some of your older cases from the 2010s, that for various reasons received a great deal of attention, either from the legal community or in some cases from the mainstream press, and then we’ll work our way forward towards the present. I will tell you that in a Nexis search of your cases, one of the ones that comes up most often is Football Association Premier League v. Karen Murphy. This is case C-403/08 and C-429/08.

So, this was a preliminary reference regarding the English Premier League’s practice of partitioning the national markets in the EU for football broadcasts. And specifically, in this case the High Court of England and Wales asked the Court whether that practice was consistent with EU law and whether this, I think unintentionally famous British pub owner, Karen Murphy could purchase a less expensive Greek decoder and use it in Great Britain.

And your conclusion was a pretty straightforward ruling that the partitioning of the viewing market for the Premier League broadcasts was contrary to the freedom to provide services. And as you said, there is no specific right to charge different prices for a work in each Member State.

The Grand Chamber of the Court essentially followed your opinion, which had some pretty drastic implications for the European broadcasting industry. And the reason I start with this case is not only because it involved an important and relatively novel legal question, but because the stakes of the decision were quite high for the industry and for politics.

And your opinion, like the judgment of the Court a few months later, was lionized in some quarters and criticized in others. So can you tell our listeners what we should know about that case legally, but also in terms of how you as an individual Advocate General dealt with that case.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: This was indeed a very challenging case, but not because of political or economic considerations, and not even because of the main finding. As you say, this finding is rather straightforward. Apparently, rights holders, like the Premier League, can obtain better prices if they sell the distribution rights for different Member States separately, per Member State.

At the time, they safeguarded this exclusivity by licenses that were limited to the corresponding Member State. However, any partitioning along Member State borders contradicts the basic idea of the internal market. Therefore, the Court did not accept such limitation of licenses. Long before this case, this idea was recognized as the exhaustion of intellectual property rights, not only in the EU but also in the U.S. Mere economic considerations cannot justify another outcome. Therefore, I did not see a major problem in the application of the concept of exhaustion to this situation.

Conversely, the challenges of this case mainly lie in the sheer number of questions of the UK court and many legal instruments that the Court raised in these questions.

In addition to the internal market questions, there were questions on competition law, on the general television directive, and on the main copyright directive, but also on a directive on conditional access and on a directive on satellite broadcasting. Some questions I could answer very easily based on existing jurisprudence, others raised rather controversial issues, and a few questions were completely new and at the same time very technical.

Therefore, the preparation of this opinion took up a lot of time. In practical terms, this meant that I had less time for other files during this period. As regards the reactions to this case, I did not experience much of what you mentioned. Once my work on a case is finished, I immediately start with the next one.

Obviously, I will study the judgment of the Court and analyze whether they agree or disagree with my reasoning. In addition, sometimes I will come across articles discussing one of my cases or experience some feedback at conferences. However, I do not systematically research the reactions to my cases.

Finally, I do not have the impression that this case put an end to the fragmentation of the internal market, which, with regard to intellectual property rights, to me, it seems the rights holders merely have lost one protection mechanism, but they can still employ enough other mechanisms, such as geo-blocking.

Mark Pollack: Ah, I see.

Katerina Linos: I want to ask a very small follow-on question, which is about the role of the Advocate General. Is it correct to say that while the Court can come to a conclusion without addressing all of the instruments and all of the questions, the Advocate General must go through a much more detailed analysis even if that detailed analysis is not essential to the result?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: It makes sense that the Advocate General takes a broader approach because the Advocate General can never be 100 percent sure that the Court follows him on a certain path. And therefore, for the instance that the Court does not follow, the Advocate General has to offer an alternative solution, and that’s the reason. The Advocate General is not supposed to write long academic articles without a relation to the case, but it has to give a useful answer and make it easy for the Court to decide, even if the Court does not take up a certain line of reasoning.

Mark Pollack: The second case we wanted to ask you about is from the same general period, around 2010-11, and it’s case C-236/09, the Test-Achats case.

This was a preliminary reference from a Belgian Court, and it raised the question about the use of sex as an actuarial factor to set insurance rates, for example, for automobile and life insurance. And in this instance, there was a 2004 Council Directive that provided a derogation from EU gender rules allowing such use. But the plaintiffs in the case argued that the derogation was in conflict with the equal rights provisions of the Treaties, and they called for that provision to be overturned. By contrast, almost all of the intervening Member States and the Commission and Council defended the derogation, and defended the use of gender in the setting of insurance premiums.

So, despite all of those arguments, your opinion held, again quite straightforwardly, that both the use of sex in setting insurance rates, and hence the derogation in the Directive, were contrary to the gender equality rules of the Treaties. And you called for the Court to declare the derogation to be invalid.

Although, interestingly, you provided for a transitional period of three years, during which that derogation would remain in place. And essentially the Grand Chamber followed you in this. So, this is another case that had far-reaching legal and economic implications; it went against a substantial body of opinion.

I wonder if you could tell us first, a bit about how you reached this opinion, and then for our listeners who may not know, a little bit about the use of transitional periods in cases like this.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: The Directive explicitly allowed for direct sex discrimination. There is a very high burden of proof to justify direct sex discrimination.

Also, Article 5, Paragraph 1 of the Directive prohibited indirect sex discrimination as to actuarial factors for insurance premiums and benefits, but Article 5, Paragraph 2 allowed direct sex discrimination, and that appears contradictory. Transitional periods are an exception in our case law, but in certain situations they are necessary to protect legitimate expectations and to prevent chaotic circumstances – and that was such a case.

Katerina Linos: So, I want to turn to another gender-related case, C.D. v. S.T., case C-167/12. This is a case about surrogacy and in particular, whether the Pregnant Workers Directive give certain rights to an intending mother to maternity leave or not. This was a fascinating case procedurally because you had an opinion in which you argued that both the surrogate mother and the intending mother should be entitled to a minimum of two weeks of leave, and the remaining maternity leave should be split among them. However, there was another Advocate General, Advocate General Wahl, who, at the time, said there’s no uniform law on adoption, much less surrogacy. And this was one of the cases where the Court did not follow your opinion, did not extend the right to maternity leave to the intending mother, and has not since said a lot about surrogacy, even though the practice has become much more widespread. Can I ask about how this works when the Court does not follow your opinion and how that works a long time afterwards, where that has not changed, even if the need and the prevalence of the practice seem to require some new thinking on the issue.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: Often legislation changes afterwards and then the problem disappears. Whether the Court has not changed is not sure because we do not have an identical case. As to that case, it was indeed not an easy case because the Directive uses the wording of “pregnant worker,” “worker who has recently given birth,” and “worker who is breastfeeding,” which covers also the intended mother if she breastfeeds. I then asked myself, does it make a sense to distinguish between breastfeeding intended mothers and intended mothers who do not breastfeed, in view of the purpose of the Directive? And the purpose of the Directive is to protect the mother-child relationship in those early days.

And I concluded that that purpose suggests that the Directive must apply generally to intended mothers, possibly even to a greater degree than to breastfeeding biological mothers. In the same way as a woman who herself has given birth to a child, an intended mother has in her care an infant for whose best interest she is responsible.

However, precisely because she herself was not pregnant, she is faced with a new situation, with the challenge of bonding with that child, integrating into the family, and adjusting to her role as a mother. This special relationship between a woman and her small child over a period which follows childbirth warrants protection in the case of intended mother in the same way as it does in the case of a biological mother. That was my reasoning.

Mark Pollack: The next case we want to ask you about is the so-called G4S case, C-157/15. This was a preliminary reference from Belgium which asked about whether private employers were allowed to issue a ban on visible display of religious, political, and philosophical beliefs, including in the case of the plaintiff, the Muslim headscarf.

In a case that looked very much like the earlier SAS v. France decision of the European Court of Human Rights, which you cited in your opinion, you held that a ban on all such images, which did not single out Islam or head scarves, would not constitute direct discrimination, but it could constitute indirect discrimination against Muslim women.

However, in your interpretation of existing EU law, that indirect effect could be justified by the legitimate policy aim of ensuring neutrality within the workplace and thus potentially not violate EU law – and the Court here followed your approach. And we were discussing this line of cases yesterday with Judge Biltgen, and the Court’s ruling resulted in some critics saying that the Court had provided companies, in a sense, a blueprint to avoid having to allow women to wear headscarves in the workplace.

And there’s been further development of the case law since this pioneering case. So I wonder if you can talk about the balance you attempted to strike in the G4S case, and how the Court has handled that balance maybe in its subsequent case law.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: I think that each case is special, and you have to look at the very specific facts of the concrete case.

And in the G4S case, Secure Solutions employees were not permitted to wear any religious, political, or philosophical symbol while on duty. And then after three years of service without headscarf, Mrs. A announced to wear a headscarf in service and was fired. And while G4S proceeded on the premise that there was no discrimination at all, France and the UK, on the other hand, assume the commission of indirect discrimination, and Belgium and Centrum considered that there was direct discrimination. And the Commission also supported the finding of indirect discrimination and an assumption of direct discrimination in the parallel case. Indirect discrimination can be justified easier than direct discrimination.

All of the hitherto ECJ cases assuming direct discrimination were without exception concerned with individuals’ immutable physical features or personal characteristics, such as gender, age, or sexual orientation, rather than with modes of conduct based on the decision or conviction such as wearing certain headwear. And therefore, I considered that that was no direct discrimination. There was not a limited ban on the wearing of visible signs of religious beliefs, but at one and the same time, the ban also explicitly prohibited the wearing of visible signs of political or philosophical beliefs. The company’s rule, I considered, was therefore an expression of a general company policy which applies without distinction and is neutral from the point of view of religion and ideology. And that left only a difference of treatment between employees who wish to give active expression to a particular belief, be it religious, political, or philosophical on the one hand, and their colleagues who did not feel the same compulsion. However, this does not constitute less favorable treatment that is directly and specifically linked to religion.

G4S did not prohibit its employees from belonging to a particular religion or from practicing that religion. Taking into account the employer’s discretion in the pursuit of its business, I found it not unreasonable for a receptionist, such as Ms. Achbita, to have to carry out her work in compliance with a particular dress code, in this case by refraining from wearing her Islamic headscarf. A ban, as the one used by G4S, could therefore be regarded as a genuine and determining occupational requirement within the meaning of a certain clause of the Directive.

Katerina Linos: We’ll turn in a different direction. Many of your cases are private-sector cases; they involve appeals against decisions of the General Court in the tax field, in the competition field. Perhaps one of the very famous recent ones is the Google Shopping case. In this case, Google appealed against both a Commission decision and a General Court decision ruling that it had abused its dominant position in the search market. It had privileged its own shopping portals over those of competitors. The remedy was on the order of €2.4 billion. In this case, the Court of Justice followed your thinking closely. And what I want to ask you about is, first, can you talk a little bit about these cases: how they work procedurally, how long they take, and how you approach them, and in particular about your experience in the Google case.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: Well, the length of the cases really depends. I try to write my opinions so that they are ready for the oral hearings, because that, at the same time, is an ideal preparation for the hearing. And then, despite me being ready for the oral hearings, the case will be pronounced or published later. The opinion will be published later, because by some reason, translation takes so much time. And then the Court will deliberate on the case, and that may take longer or shorter, depending on how controversial it is. And of course, those big competition law cases may be complicated, and so they might take longer sometimes. And the Court, in appeals cases, only reviews points of law and not the facts. Accordingly, the Court cannot carry out a fresh review of complex economic or technological facts as evaluated by the Court of First Instance. This is particularly important in respect of the proper delineation and functioning of the digital markets on which Google operates.

As to Google’s behavior, referred to in your question, the EU Court had to decide for the very first time whether so called self-preferencing practices of dominant operators are to be classified an abuse of a dominant position within the meaning of Article 102 TFEU. The Court does not take the view that such self-preferencing is per se abusive, but requires analyzing whether it is in line with competition on the merits and capable of excluding as efficient competitors from the market.

In the case at issue, the Court held that Google’s preferential treatment of its own hitherto largely unsuccessful comparison shopping service, at the expense of competing services, constituted a departure from competition on the merits, harming competition and ultimately the consumer. This behavior consisted of a sophisticated commercial and technological strategy, allowing Google to leverage its almost monopolistic power in the general search engine market to the downstream online comparison shopping service markets by deviating data traffic in its favor.

In fact, when searching for goods via Google’s general search engine, users were primarily directed to Google’s comparison shopping service, displayed in a specific box with pictures and additional information at the top of the search result page and, paralleled by means of a specific adjustment algorithm, called Panda, Google demoted competing shopping comparison services at the bottom of the search result page where they appeared as a simple blue link. These blue links did not attract users’ attention and resulted in a considerable and irreplaceable loss of data traffic for those competitors. However, it was undisputed that had that algorithm been applied to Google’s own shopping comparison service as well, it would have been demoted in a similar way.

This shows that Google’s practice deviated from competition on the merits and gave rise to at least potential anti-competitive foreclosure effects on the downstream online comparison shopping service market.

Katerina Linos: Because I’m from California, I’ll ask a follow-on question. So one of my colleagues, Nate Persily, says the EU is the only game in town when it comes to regulating Silicon Valley tech companies. This decision came down alongside another Court of Justice opinion, in Commission v. Ireland, saying that the money Apple had put in escrow, the €16 billion or €14 billion, should be money that the state of Ireland or other governments collect. How do you see the role of the Court in regulating an industry that often involves very large firms based in the United States? How do you see the role of the Court in moving ahead of American regulators, moving ahead and faster than regulators in other parts of the world, and making what, to me, are common sense antitrust judgments, but that other regulators have not reached at the time you reached them?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: I think that, in the first place, it’s a legislator that regulates. The courts should apply and concretize what the legislator laid down. And traditionally in Europe, the Chicago School was not so present as in the United States, and that is the main difference, without discussing specific judgments.

And I think that our traditional Freiburg School, ordoliberal approach, is quite reasonable. But of course, you need to be consistent, and I think this is the biggest task because the companies need to have legal security; the judgments need to be predictable. And so I try to do my best in this sense.

By the way, under the Biden administration, there were also certain setbacks as to the Chicago School approach, but we will see whether those developments go on.

Katerina Linos: Yes, it’s fascinating to see Lina Khan move ahead and follow some of these opinions. Let me ask about this point of predictability. In the Google Shopping case, it seems that the Commission, the General Court, and the Court of Justice more or less followed the same approach. But in the Commission v. Ireland case, the Commission took one approach, saying, “The money belongs to Ireland,” the General Court says “No, the money belongs to Apple,” and then you went back to support the Commission.

Similarly, in the Illumina merger, which also was announced kind of around the same time, your position was different from that of the General Court and different from that of the Commission. How do you think about these difficult, very high stakes cases? How do you think about money in escrow or money that is due that is in the order of billions? And how do you think about doing and undoing mergers a while after the initial potential acquisition has been announced?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: I was neither the Advocate General in Commission v. Ireland nor in Illumina Grail. And I’m not sure whether I would have pleaded in exactly the same way in the first place, and in the second place, I think we really have to work on predictability.

I can add that the Commission v. Ireland case was kind of a surprise. It was decided not really on the merits, but on some kind of procedural grounds. The so-called “frame of reference” was decided by the Court of First Instance, and the Court of Justice left open whether this frame of reference was defined rightly because there was no cross appeal against the frame of reference. And therefore, it was considered as fixed, Rechtskraft, but that was very technical and procedural.

Mark Pollack: Thank you so much for talking about so many different cases. I think to wrap up, we have a few general questions for you. So first, your two decades on the Court have seen an enormous amount of change, from the 2004 enlargement to the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, the justiciability at the Court of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and much more. From your perspective, what are the sort of biggest and most important changes in the Court during your time here? And they could either be the obvious ones I’ve mentioned or others that those outside might not immediately think of.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: I think the most important changes are the two obvious ones.

The first is enlargement. We are now 36 Members of the Court, and 70 Members of the General Court makes 106 altogether. When I arrived in 2003, there were only 23 Members of this Court and 15, as opposed to 70, Members of the General Court. Altogether, 38 Members; each person knew each other person, spouses included. And this enlargement, of course, changes the discussion culture at the Court.

The second important change is transformation to a constitutional Court. The Court of Justice now focuses on values – EU’s identity, the rule of law, fundamental rights. So-called technical areas, as VAT, excises, climate certificates, and air passenger rights are being transferred to the General Court.

Also, former President Gil Carlos Rodríguez Iglesias, back in 2003, said that being a motor or engine of integration did not reflect the self-understanding of the Court of Justice. I think these days it’s different. The Court rather sees its task in being the driving force for integration and the rule of law.

Mark Pollack: That is fascinating because I think in the United States a lot of experts would consider that the Golden Age of constitutional decision-making in this Court was the ‘60s and ‘70s. And you’re suggesting that it’s essentially now.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: It’s the self-understanding in any case.

Mark Pollack: Yeah.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: Yeah.

Mark Pollack: Fascinating.

Katerina Linos: And can I follow up? Is this a recent development with the rule of law cases, or does it come from the moment of the Charter? And is it a change since 2000 or is it a change since 2020? Because you said in 2003, it was not the self-understanding, and I’m thinking of some of the constitutional projects and the fundamental rights projects that date from that era.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: I think a very important case is the case about the salaries of the Portuguese judges.

Katerina Linos: So Portuguese judges is the moment.

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: Portuguese judges, salary of judges – is this a competence of the Court? The Court established that it’s competent even for salaries of judges and therefore for the organization of the judiciary in the Member States. And that’s the mother of the rule of law cases.

And the rule of law is a value of the European Union. And now values are very important. And values form the identity. So I think that’s a very important case. Of course, the Charter made this more easy. But I would say from this case on, more or less.

Katerina Linos: I want to ask a pointed follow up. So one of our German colleagues, Martin Nettesheim, looks at that jurisprudence and says, “Taking Article 2 and these 12 abstract values and turning them into very concrete prescriptions, into penalties, makes the EU itself a challenge to the rule of law. We have a Frankenstein monster here taking these principles. We say Hungary is the challenge to the rule of law, but look at what the EU is doing.” Do you see any merit to that kind of critique, or is it fairly minimalist to say judges need to be independent for the whole community to do its work?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: Of course judges need to be independent. But what are the limits for the judicial power that’s behind that? I think the Court will decide this issue because we have the case on values pending. The hearings were two weeks ago, it’s a case against Hungary, against its law which limits or forbids information on change of sex and on same-sex love in schools and other matters. And on the occasion of this case, the Court will probably also decide on the question how far values are justiciable.

Mark Pollack: Article 2 is an issue that we’ve talked to a lot of judges about. It strikes me that the rule of law cases that we’ve heard up until now have been Article 2 in conjunction with Article 19, which is much more specific. And so there’s a debate about whether Article 2 alone can create obligations for the Member States. Do you have thoughts on that?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: Of course, but of course I will not tell you. [Laughter]

Mark Pollack: Okay, that is entirely fair and to some extent expected.

So we’ve just asked you to look back at changes in the Court. Now I’d like to ask you to look forward. In your view, what are the most important legal and constitutional challenges facing the Court today, and on which issues do you think the Court is going to have the greatest impact in the years to come?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: Well, I’m kind of minimalistic, insofar I would say that the challenge for the Court is to produce consistent, clear, and predictable case law in the areas of its competence, and thus to maintain the Member States’ and the people’s trust and confidence.

Mark Pollack: I’m very aware that despite everything we’ve talked about, we’ve only covered a fraction of the issues on your agenda and your time on the Court.

So, I wonder if you want to leave us with any final thoughts about what European legal scholars or even the general public should know about this Court?

Advocate General Juliane Kokott: That the Court of Justice is a very important Court with broad competences affecting all areas of life and society and that its cases are extremely interesting and worth being studied and discussed.

Mark Pollack: That’s an excellent note on which to end.

Katerina Linos: Thank you so much. This is so helpful.

Mark Pollack: Thank you.

Katerina Linos: This wraps up our conversation with Advocate General Juliane Kokott. What struck me most were her insights into how the Court has fundamentally transformed during her long tenure.

She described two major changes that have reshaped the institution. First, enlargement has altered the Court’s culture entirely. The Court has grown from 38 Members who all knew each other personally to 106 Members today. This growth has created a more fragmented environment where close relationships are less common.

Second, the Court has evolved from handling technical matters like taxation and air passenger rights to becoming a true constitutional court. Today it focuses on values, EU identity, rule of law, and fundamental rights. These observations reveal how the Court has become the driving force for European integration and the rule of law.

If you found this discussion interesting, please share this episode with one of your friends and stay tuned for more Borderlines conversations. Our thanks as always to our producer, Toni Mendicino, our sound engineer, Keith Hernandez, and to the staff of the Court of Justice for making our CJEU profile series possible.