Costa / Enel decision
The Costa / Enel decision is a judgment of the European Court of Justice of July 15, 1964, in which it established the absolute primacy of Community law over national legal systems. The decision thus established the so-called priority of application of Union law .
It builds on the Van Gend & Loos decision of February 5, 1963, in which the ECJ first made clear the independence and primacy of the law of the European Communities through direct jurisdiction.
Facts and subject of dispute
In the 1960s, all electricity companies based in Italy were to be nationalized . Flaminio Costa, a shareholder of the electricity supplier Enel , considered this to be EEC - illegal . In order to provoke a legal battle and thus to proceed against the nationalization, Costa stopped paying his own electricity bill. In the subsequent legal dispute before the Milan Peace Court , he asked the ECJ for a preliminary ruling under Article 177 of the EEC Treaty.
Costa argued that the nationalization violated Articles 37, 53, 93 and 102 of the EEC Treaty. The ECJ ruled that the nationalization law violated the EEC Treaty. It then had to be picked up.
The decision of the ECJ
The ECJ stated in its decision that the EEC Treaty created its own legal system, which was incorporated into the legal systems of the member states and is therefore to be applied by the national courts. The member states have thus limited their sovereignty rights and thus created a legal body that is binding on their relatives and themselves. The consequence of this is that the wording and spirit of the treaty make it impossible for states to counter the legal order they have adopted on the basis of reciprocity with unilateral measures.
As an autonomous source of law, no national legal provisions of any kind can take precedence over the contract as an autonomous source of law, "unless it is to be deprived of its character as Community law and if the legal basis of the Community itself is not to be questioned."
Follow-up jurisprudence of the ECJ
The Costa / Enel judgment and the primacy of Union law that it stipulates is of outstanding importance for European law and is still the topic that dominates the constitutional dispute between the ECJ and the national constitutional courts. In its subsequent case law, the ECJ worked out individual aspects of priority under Union law. In Internationale Handelsgesellschaft, for example, he confirmed the primacy of any Union law over any national law, including the primacy of secondary law over constitutional law. In Simmenthal II , the ECJ then also states that every national court would have jurisdiction to declare national law that is in breach of Union law inapplicable, i.e. it decentralizes the authority to reject Union law.
literature
Individual evidence
- ↑ Judgment of December 17, 1970 - ECJ 11/70
