The contradictory approach of the CJEU to the judicial review of standards: a love-hate relationship?

Standards enter the European legal order in a variety of ways which affect their judicial review. Notably, international standards are sometimes incorporated by reproduction in binding or nonbinding EU measures, or they penetrate the European legal order through the technique of referral, whereby the text of the standards is referred to in EU secondary law. The aim of this contribution is to examine the different techniques through which standards enter the European legal order and evaluate the way in which the Court of Justice of the European Union may judicially review the standards. The chapter will show that the Court of Justice currently has a ‘love-hate relationship’ with standards. While it accepts jurisdiction on harmonised European standards which are (at least formally) not binding, it refuses to accept jurisdiction on international standards which are incorporated into EU secondary law, thereby undermining the legitimacy of standardisation as a regulatory technique for the EU legal system.