Regional integration and the EU legal system

Regional integration means a process of political agreements between governments aimed at reducing tariff, customs or any other barriers to reciprocal trade. But the European Union has achieved a broader integration, creating a supra-constitutional legal system.

It is necessary to understand its model of bureaucracy, since it involves institutional innovations. Thus, the EU is made up of a Commission, a Council of Ministers, a Parliament and a Court with permanent jurisdiction, not being a federation in a manner known by tripartite division. 

 The powers and limits of power of institutions such as the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament can be inferred from an interpretation of the Treaties of the Union: Treaty on European Union (EC Treaty) and Treaty on European Union (TEU). However, in the case of the Court of Justice (ECJ), its effective power is not explicit in the Treaties, because its main competence is not determined in a provision of international agreements.

The Member States avoided the transfer of legislative competence to the “community of States”, but at the same time that States were not concerned about and feared to give legislative powers to the European Parliament, the European Court of Justice promoted the constitution of a Political union with effective powers even without popular representation.

The constitutional system found in the Court of Justice is Common Law, in which there is the creative interpretation of the Law. In this system, judicial decisions are sources of law, this causes different conceptions of law and constitution.

The constitutional system found in the Court of Justice is Common Law, in which there is the creative interpretation of the Law. In this system, judicial decisions are sources of law, this causes different conceptions of law and constitution.

The English law is bound to the principles of the Home Rule Constitution; in this system the constitution must be adapted to each circumstance.

The jurisprudence of the European Court is of paramount importance for European law as the case law of the English courts is for modern English law.  

The transport corporation Van Gend en Loos imported an amount of Urea methanol belonging to a particular category of tariff of the import duties. After the EEC treaty became active in the year 1958.the Dutch administration infringed the EECs 12 article treaty which granted the member states power change or introduce custom duties. The inspector of customs and export following the latter therefore at Zaandam made a dismissal to the objection of Van Gend.

Whether the nationals of such a state can lay claim to the personal rights which must be guarded.

The European court saw that article 12 of the EEC treaty had an application of the law on a direct manner. Its main agenda was the creation of a common market. The community law gives an imposition of obligations to the member states as pointed out by the court. The ECJ the supported the lawful move of Van Gend Company since it is the interest of the particular to give protection to their rights.

There are two new developments in the EU legal system, the first of which are the doctrines of direct effect and supremacy, and finally the institutionalization of legal superiority that has produced irreversible effects on judicial autonomy. The unique character found in the Community legal system proposes that care should be taken to ensure that the true normative production is known without framing the EU system in known constitutional systems or even an international system. This is due to the fact that there are innovations and peculiarities of European Community law.

The constitutional system of the Court of Justice

The consolidation of the doctrines of self-enforceability and the supremacy of community norms is due to the action of the CJE, the EU is a sui generis legal system that combines characteristics of the two major constitutional systems known: Common Law and Civil Law.

In 1994, the European Commission commissioned research to assess Member States’ compliance with Community rules and to better understand the increased reporting of corruption, fraud and misuse of funds for the implementation of Community policies in the early 1990s. According to the survey, Denmark and Great Britain, which had already shown resistance to integration, were not the countries that had the worst results in the survey 

The Lisbon treaty was headed by the state heads and the government of the 27^th EU nation members on December 2007 on date 13.the latter was in tensed to develop the working of the European Union in accordance to two waves of enlargement which had been taking place since the year 2004, an action which had increased the number of EU members nations from 15 to 27.lison treaty was drafted to replace the constitutional treaty, a treaty which had been rejected by French and Dutch voters earlier on in 2005.the treaty is made up of changes that are aimed at the increment of coherence of the external actions of the EU. It grants high representative of the Union for security who will be responsible in defense policies. The representatives will chair the external relations council and will be the vice president of the EU commission. He will be responsible for the coordination of the external actions of the commission so as to ensure coherence between the external actions of EU. The high representative will receive support from the European External Action Service.

The existence of two interconnected legal systems is not unprecedented. The most appropriate comparison to the case of the EU concerns the conflict of national and international rules – by the very nature and scope of possible conflicts – and the decision by the most appropriate method of resolving a conflict between a Community rule ( of Community interest) and a national rule (of interest of the Member State) involves legal doctrines that depart from divergent priorities. The Community interest is not international, it has a supranational character and has therefore been affirmed as an interest superior to the national interest of a Member State and to the international interest of two or more Member States. The process of consolidating European Community law is related to the fact that a legal system, in addition to the internal and international ones, is now in force on the peoples of the Member States.

In relation to the conflicts between national norms and international norms, classical literature has traditionally presented two possible solutions: dualism and monism.

In the order of validity, for monists, international norms must be superior (monist internationalists) or subordinate (nationalist monist) to constitutional norms and other internal norms. The non-admission of the coexistence of more than one valid legal system in the same time and space is what leads to the hierarchy of norms.

The doctrines of direct effect and supremacy

The Court of Justice of the European Union is a court responsible for interpreting EU law and applying it uniformly in all Member States. The main function of this Court is to ensure that Union law, which is made up of treaties signed between the states that comprise it.

Over the years, through its case law, the Court has created an obligation for national administrations and judges to fully apply EU law within their respective spheres of competence. The judiciary of the Member States is therefore prevented from applying any provision of national law which is contrary to EU law, be it before or after the provisions of the Union. This reveals the primacy of EU law to the detriment of Member States’ domestic law Member States.

In order to achieve greater agility, the Court of Justice of the European Union has created two new courts dealing with specific matters, namely:

General Court: composed of twenty-seven judges and, unlike the Court of Justice, does not have Advocates-General

Civil Service Tribunal: composed of seven judges; deals with disputes between the EU institutions and their agents. It shall have jurisdiction in disputes between the Communities and their servants. These disputes concern not only matters relating to employment relationships per se (remuneration, career development, recruitment, disciplinary measures, etc.), but also to the social security scheme (sickness, invalidity, accidents at work, family allowances, etc.). However, it does not have jurisdiction to hear disputes between national authorities and their agents.

The emergence of a third system of standards production, coming from a “community of states”, presents itself to dualistic jurists as a problem of conflict of relations between the legal order and the international legal order

Constitutional supremacy continues to be a symbol of state sovereignty and has been revealed through the system of controlling the constitutionality of laws and designating a higher court with the function of defending the constitution.

We can see the consolidation within the European Union of an institutional legal model of the prevalence of supranational legal presuppositions on national constitutional peculiarities. The most remarkable consequence of this phenomenon is the political supremacy unprecedented in the world today. European Community law has proved to be the main means of force and coercivity to consolidate the authority and effectiveness of the Union’s powers.

In practice, despite the lack of explicit legal provision in the treaties promoting the European Union, Member States have accepted the transfer of political, legislative and judicial powers. The most important executive and legislative powers of the Union are exercised by the Council (which is also an institution of the European Union), unable to operate in a democratic way by presenting in its measurement of votes a great concentration of Executive Powers from richer countries such as the United Kingdom , France, Germany, Italy and Spain

References

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Craig P, De Búrca G, editors. The evolution of EU law. OUP Oxford; 2011 Feb 17.

Hay P. Supremacy of Community Law in National Courts: A Progress Report on Referrals under the EEC Treaty. The American Journal of Comparative Law. 1968 Oct 1:524-51.

Koawlik-Banczyk K. Should We Polish It Up-The Polish Constitutional Tribunal and the Idea of Supremacy of EU Law. German LJ. 2005;6:1355.

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Weatherill S. Cases and materials on EU law. Oxford University Press, USA; 2014 Jul 10.