robert_de_molesme
23.05.03, 15:12
europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/about/abc/abc_13.html
° Costa/ENEL
Just a year later (1963) , the 'Costa/ENEL' case gave the Court an
opportunity to set out its position in more detail. The facts of this case
were the following: in 1962, Italy nationalised the production and
distribution of electricity and transferred the assets of the electricity
undertakings to the National Electricity Board (ENEL). As a shareholder of
Edison Volt, one of the companies that was nationalised, Mr Costa considered
that he had been deprived of his dividend and consequently refused to pay an
electricity bill for ITL 1926. In proceedings before the arbitration court in
Milan, one of the arguments put forward by Mr Costa to justify his conduct
was that the nationalisation infringed a number of provisions of the EC
Treaty. In order to be able to assess Mr Costa's submissions in his defence,
the court requested the European Court of Justice to interpret various
aspects of the EC Treaty. In its judgment, the Court stated the following in
relation to the legal nature of the EC:
'By contrast with ordinary international treaties, the EEC Treaty has created
its own legal system which ... became an integral part of the legal systems
of the Member States and which their courts are bound to apply. By creating a
Community of unlimited duration, having its own institutions, its own
personality, its own legal capacity and capacity of representation on the
international plane and, more particularly, real powers stemming from a
limitation of sovereignty or a transfer of powers from the States to the
Community, the Member States have limited their sovereign rights ... and have
thus created a body of law which binds both their nationals and themselves.'
On the basis of its detailed observations, the Court reached the following
conclusion:
'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. The transfer
by the States from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system
of the rights and obligations arising under the Treaty carries with it a
permanent limitation of their sovereign rights, against which a subsequent
unilateral act incompatible with the concept of the Community cannot
prevail.'
In the light of these judgments, the elements which together typically
characterise the special legal nature of the EC are:
the transfer of powers to the Community institutions to a greater degree than
with other international organisations, and extending to areas in which
States normally retain their sovereign rights;
the establishment of its own legal order which is independent of the Member
States' legal orders;
the primacy of Community law, which ensures that Community law may not be
revoked or amended by national law, and that it takes precedence over
national law if the two conflict.
*******
Tako rzecze ETS w Luksemburgu; cokolwiek odbiega to od tekstu broszurki pana
Prezydenta, ale ja sie czlowieka nie czepiam. Nie musi sie na wszystkim znac.
RdM