Sources Of Europen Union

Sources of European Union Law

Lecturer: Dr Marcin Marcinko


Part I


1. European law and European legal order – definitions:

The European Union has elaborated a complex and highly developed system of internal law which has direct effect within the legal systems of its Member States.
The Law of the European Union is the unique legal system which operates alongside the laws of MemberStates of the EU.
The EU law overrides national law in many areas, especially in terms of economic and social policy.

The EU constitutes a new legal order in international law for the mutual social and economic benefit of the Member States. This law is sometimes classified as supranational law.

Community law – law which has been elaborated within the first pillar of the EU (EC law).

EUlaw:
- is a superior source of law;
- penetrates into the national legal orders;
- bases on a thesis of the transfer of sovereign powers by the Member States to the EU, on accession.

EU law has certain distinctive constitutional qualities – as a superior source of law (the supremacy of EU law), and as a source of law that penetrates into the national legal orders notwithstanding its“international” origins or the particularities of the various national constitutional orders (the direct applicability of EU law).

2. Acquis communautaire:

Acquis communautaire – this is a French term meaning, essentially, “the EU as it is” – in other words, the rights and obligations that EU countries share.
The “acquis” includes all the EU’s treaties and laws, declarations and resolutions,international agreements on EU affairs and the judgments given by the Court of Justice.
It also includes action that EU governments take together in the area of “justice and home affairs” and on the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Accepting the “acquis” therefore means taking the EU as you find it.
Candidate countries have to accept the “acquis” before they can join the EU, and make EU law part oftheir own national legislation.

3. The autonomy of EU law:

Van Gend en Loos Case (1963):
“[T]he Community constitutes a new legal order of international law, for the benefit of which states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and the subjects of which comprise not only member states but also their nationals”.
“By contrast with ordinary international treaties,the EEC Treaty has created its own legal system which, on the entry into force of the Treaty, became an integral part of the legal system of the member states and which their courts are bound to apply”.


Four elements of the EU law as an autonomous legal system:
a) the EU legal order is a separate and autonomous system distinct from the general order of public international law;
b) EU law isa part of national law, which means that national courts can and must apply it in accordance with the authoritative rulings of the Court of Justice (ECJ);
c) the EU legal order is based on a transfer of sovereign powers by the Member States to the EU; Member States can no longer exercise those powers which have been transferred to the EU, and must abstain from any acts which hinder the EU in itsexercise of these powers;
d) Member States and EU citizens are the subjects of EU law, and as subjects have rights and obligations flowing from and under the Treaties.

The structure is akin to a federal legal system, with the federal and state authorities acting within their respective spheres of competence, and with courts adjudicating over the boundaries between those spheres.

Obligationsof Member States:
a) to ensure the “effectiveness” of EU law – this has not only occurred in relation to the EU law/national law interface, but also in relation to administrative processes for the enforcement of EU law;
b) to pursue the uniform application of EU law;
c) to construct the individual within a framework of legal protection – this is not just a question of ensuring that...