Judicial protection of individual applicants revisited: access to justice through the prism of judicial subsidiarity

Rules on standing hold the power to enable, as well as to foreclose, intervention in regulatory processes. As such, they determine who may challenge regulatory power, and according to which criteria. This makes standing rules pivotal to any legal system. In the EU context, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has been much criticised over the years for its narrow interpretation of direct standing rules of individual applicants. Examining recent case law on standing of individual applicants, with a focus on jurisprudence concerning mainly EU environmental law, this article sheds new light on this judicial approach, arguing that the EU court acts according to judicial subsidiarity; that is, reducing CJEU intervention and enabling judicial matters to be resolved closer to the citizens. This article shows that as a consequence, attempts to improve access to justice in the EU legal order need to focus on guaranteeing broad national standing rules and bolstering the role of national courts in securing judicial protection for individuals.