EU judges' opaque handling of potential conflicts of interest

A new investigation into the Court of Justice of the European Union says many of the bloc’s top judges hold financial interests while the court relies largely on internal self-policing to manage possible conflicts of interest.

Le Monde, working with Investigate Europe and partner outlets, published the report on July 1, 2026. It said 40% of the CJEU’s 92 judges hold financial interests, and that some judges sat on cases involving sectors or companies in which they had reported interests.

The investigation raises no allegation of bribery. Its central concern is transparency: whether the court’s rules, disclosure practices and case-assignment system give the public enough confidence that judges are hearing cases impartially.

The CJEU told the investigation that judges’ financial interests belong to their private sphere and do not affect decisions.

What the investigation found

According to the report, the court’s code of conduct requires judges to declare interests when they take office and to update those declarations every three years. But the code does not define what counts as a conflict of interest, and it does not provide for external verification of declarations or of case-assignment decisions.

The investigation also said the CJEU has observer status in the EU’s interinstitutional ethics body and has not committed to common ethics standards. That position matters because the court is the EU’s highest judicial authority, yet the system described by the report appears to depend on judges and court officials policing themselves.

The story said about 30 declarations of interest were updated within a week after the CJEU was asked about specific cases.

Investigate Europe also filed a complaint with the European Ombudswoman after being denied access to earlier declarations, according to the report.

Examples cited by the reporting

The article names several judges and specific situations it says illustrate the problem.

It says Advocate General Juliane Kokott held pharmaceutical shares while handling pharma-related matters.

It also says General Court judge Geert De Baere sat on a banking case while holding accounts and investments at BNP Paribas Fortis.

The reporting says these examples did not prove improper influence, but they showed how judges’ private financial interests can overlap with matters before the court. That overlap is what has put the CJEU’s disclosure regime under scrutiny.

The investigation further says some panel assignments may not have been reviewed before judgment. The General Court president said the panel’s participation was justified by the need for the good administration of justice.

Why the court matters

The Court of Justice of the European Union is the EU’s top court, and its rulings are binding across member states. That makes questions about impartiality and public confidence especially sensitive.

The issue is not whether judges are allowed to own assets in the abstract. It is whether the court’s current rules are strong enough to prevent, detect and explain potential conflicts when judges hear cases that touch industries, companies or holdings they have disclosed.

The investigation says the court’s internal rules rely on declarations made at appointment and updated every three years, but do not define conflict in a way that would make recusals or reviews easily testable from outside.

That leaves a gap between the court’s assurance that private interests do not affect decisions and the public’s ability to verify how case assignments and recusals are handled.

Court response and oversight questions

The CJEU’s response, as reported, was that judges’ financial interests are part of their private sphere and do not affect decisions.

The broader criticism is not that the court has no rules at all, but that those rules are largely internal and opaque. The report says there is no external body verifying the disclosures or reviewing how cases are assigned.

That has revived debate over whether the EU’s top court should face stronger ethics oversight, more detailed disclosure requirements or stricter recusal rules.

The complaint to the European Ombudswoman gives the issue a formal institutional channel, but the report does not say whether the court has changed policy or whether any institution has opened a wider review.

Reform debate

The investigation lands in a larger debate about how far judicial ethics rules should go at the EU level.

Among the reforms now under discussion are whether judges should be required to divest more holdings, disclose more detail, or submit potential conflicts to outside review rather than relying on internal self-assessment.

The story also points to the question of term length. One line of argument is that longer non-renewable terms could reduce incentives to keep relationships with sectors or institutions that may later come before the court.

The reporting does not say any such reform is imminent. But it does suggest the current system may be under pressure from lawmakers, transparency campaigners and ethics advocates to become more explicit and more public.

What happens next

The immediate next questions are whether the CJEU issues a fuller response, whether it clarifies the specific case assignments named in the report and whether the European Ombudswoman acts on the complaint.

It is also likely that lawmakers and campaigners will press for more transparency if the report is followed by additional coverage from partner outlets or by Reuters-style rewrites that widen the audience for the findings.

For now, the investigation has turned a technical ethics regime into a public test of judicial independence, disclosure and trust.