EU legal principles

Supremacy

It has been ruled several times by the European Court of Justice that EU law is superior to national laws, and even Member States' constitutions. Where a conflict arises between EU law and the law of a Member State, EU law takes precedence, so that the law of a Member State must be disapplied. This doctrine, known as the supremacy of EU law, emerged from the European Court of Justice in Costa v. ENEL. ^[23] Mr Costa was an Italian citizen opposed to nationalising the Italian energy company ENEL, because he had shares in it. He refused to pay his electricity bill in protest, and argued that nationalisation infringed EC law on the State distorting the market.^[24] The Italian government believed that this was not even an issue that could be complained about by a private individual, since it was a national law decision to make. The Court ruled in favour of the government, because the relevant Treaty rule on an undistorted market was one on which the Commission alone could challenge the Italian government. As an individual, Mr Costa had no standing to challenge the decision, because that Treaty provision had no direct effect.^[25] But on the logically prior issue of Mr Costa's ability to raise a point of EC law against a national government in legal proceeding before the courts in that Member State the ECJ disagreed with the Italian government. It ruled that EC law would not be effective if Mr Costa could not challenge national law on the basis of its alleged incompatibility with EC law.

It follows from all these observations that the law stemming from the treaty, an independent source of law, could not, because of its special and original nature, be overridden by domestic legal provisions, however framed, without being deprived of its character as community law and without the legal basis of the community itself being called into question.

However, while Community law is accepted as taking precedence to the law of Member States, not all Member States share the analysis used by the European institutions about why EU law overrides national law, when a conflict appears.

Many countries' highest courts have stated that Community law takes precedence provided that it continues to respect fundamental constitutional principles of the Member State, the ultimate judge of which will be the Member State (more exactly, the court of that Member State), rather than the European Union institutions themselves^. This reflects the idea that Member States remain the "Master of the Treaties", and the basis for EU law's effect. In other cases, countries write the precedence of Community law into their constitutions. For example, the Constitution of Ireland contains a clause that, '"No provision of this Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State which are necessitated by the obligations of membership of the European Union or of the Communities..."

Direct effect

EU law covers a broad range which is comparable to that of the legal systems of the Member States themselves. Both the provisions of the Treaties, and EU regulations are said to have "direct effect" horizontally. This means private citizens can rely on the rights granted to them (and the duties created for them) against one another. For instance, an air hostess could sue her airline employer for sexual discrimination. The other main legal instrument of the EU, "directives", have direct effect, but only "vertically". Private citizens may not sue one another on the basis of an EU directive, since these are addressed to the Member States. Directives allow some choice for Member States in the way they translate (or 'transpose') a directive into national law - usually this is done by passing one or more legislative acts, such as an Act of Parliament or statutory instrument in the UK. Once this has happened citizens may rely on the law that has been implemented. They may only sue the government "vertically" for failing to implement a directive correctly. An example of a directive is the Product liability Directive, which makes companies liable for dangerous and defective products that harm consumers.

Eur-Lex is the legal database of the EU. In Eur-Lex you can find 455,800 references in total. It amounts to 3,650,000 different documents if one includes the different language editions from 1951 onwards. Every year the stock of acts in Eur-Lex increases by around 15,000 on average They are to be found here: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/tools/faq.htm

Consideration of the articles of Acquis of communautaire and Legislation of the EU is presented in reference Book from European Union (Donetsk: DONNUET, in 2010).