Time Clash: the Court of Justice Limits the Temporal Scope of Lex Mitior

In the Lin judgment, 1 the ECJ held that the primacy of EU law requires national courts to disapply a national standard of protection of fundamental rights, specifically when the application of lex mitior to procedural norms jeopardises the EU obligation to effectively punish offences against EU financial interests.Six years after the Taricco II (technically M.A.S.) decision, the ECJ used another preliminary reference to clarifyby distinguishingits previous ruling: primacy is limited by the prohibition of retroactive laws, but not by the retroactive application of more favourable procedural norms.Consequently, national norms of this type must be disapplied when they conflict with EU law obligations.This case note argues that the ECJ has reached this conclusion by juxtaposing lex mitior with another rule of law principletempus regit actumultimately denying that the former can limit the primacy of EU law.An intricate case law development triggered the ECJ s intervention.Two judgments of the Romanian Constitutional Court have declared the national rule of limitation periods unconstitutional for violating the principles of foreseeability