Judgment_paragraph 125 · Hungary v European Parliament and Council of the European Union (C-156/21)

125As stated in recital 5 of the contested regulation, once a candidate State becomes a Member State, it joins a legal structure that is based on the fundamental premiss that each Member State shares with all the other Member States, and recognises that they share with it, the common values contained in Article 2 TEU, on which the European Union is founded. That premiss is based on the specific and essential characteristics of EU law, which stem from the very nature of EU law and the autonomy it enjoys in relation to the laws of the Member States and to international law. That premiss implies and justifies the existence of mutual trust between the Member States that those values will be recognised and, therefore, that the EU law that implements them will be respected (see, to that effect, Opinion 2/13 (Accession of the Union to the ECHR) of 18 December 2014, EU:C:2014:2454, paragraphs 166 to 168, and judgments of 27 February 2018, Associação Sindical dos Juízes Portugueses, C‑64/16, EU:C:2018:117, paragraph 30, and of 20 April 2021, Repubblika, C‑896/19, EU:C:2021:311, paragraph 62). That recital also states that the laws and practices of Member States should continue to comply with the common values on which the European Union is founded.