Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen

Beginning with the decision in the Van Gend & Loos against Dutch tax authorities on 5 February 1963, the European Court of Justice (ECJ ) has developed his now almost indisputable case law of the autonomy and the primacy of the law of the European Communities.

Facts and dispute

The Dutch shipping company Van Gend & Loos introduced in September 1960 to identify a particular chemical raw material from Germany to the Netherlands. This was raised by the Dutch authorities as a result of reorganization of the Dutch customs tariff from 1 January 1960, a duty of 8 % of product value. Previously, the appropriate duty rate was 3%. That with the lawsuit against this type of clearance letztinstanzlich dealt Dutch administrative court referred the matter to the ECJ with the material under European law question in this context alternate end.

The decision of the ECJ

The Court pointed out here:

" The European Economic Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for their benefit, have if its sovereignty rights are restricted to a limited framework of the States; a legal order, and the subjects are not only Member States but also their nationals. The independent by the legislation of the Member States of Community law is therefore the individual, just as it imposes on them obligations, also confer rights. "

Accordingly, it is the community right to an independent, uniform, directly and primarily applicable in the Member States legal system, even against a member state constitutional law prevails ( as the ECJ later in the Kreil decision). This case law, the ECJ confirmed in several subsequent decisions, particularly in the Costa / ENEL decision and in International trading company.

The basis for the doctrine of the primacy of Community law initially to recognize the autonomy of the European legal order, which the ECJ as in " Van Gend & Loos " did. The Court decided at this point that it is in the community to find a legal system of its own kind, which is not international law or a governmental nature. While it is not disputed in the founding treaties originally to international treaties, but was the parting of the Community legal system of this basis, and their consequent independence from the necessity of legal coherence within the community to create and sustain inferred.

Based on this thesis can also be the problem of the relationship between the European Community rank and national law easier to answer. The "classical " international law can, depending on their nature, occupy different rank positions within a state. Within Germany, as it can on the level of ordinary statutory law (Art. 59 GG ) or between the law and constitutional law (Art. 25 GG).

Depending on what place it occupies in the national legal order, it may claim priority or must yield higher standing law. Also the principle of " lex posterior derogat legi priori ", according to the law later set the earlier set ousted in equality does not apply. In the Federal Republic of Germany, however, it can not proceed to the Basic Law. Starting from the position that it is not a part of the national legal system when Community law, the collision rules do not apply to what the ECJ in its so-called Simmenthal II decision as postulated.

The autonomy of Community law does not follow from the treaties themselves though, but was inferred from the Court of the need for uniform application of European law. The Federal Constitutional Court has the case law of the ECJ as regards the independence of the European legal order, expressly recognized.

Although the autonomy of the European legal order says nothing about their relationship with other jurisdictions from, but it serves as a starting point for further reasoning of the Court. This establishes the priority by stating that the Member States have transferred their sovereignty in part to the community, whereby the individual is itself diminished compared to supranational means for legal entity with its own rights and obligations (see Direct effect ). Furthermore, he concludes from the requirement of unity and functioning of the European legal order, after which the European law has uniformly valid in the entire area of ​​justice, that no Member State to decide on the applicability or inapplicability of Community law.