108
Monica Claes
Deuxième séance de travail — Les retombées
the lead of the ECJ with respect to the autonomy of EU law vis-à-vis ‘classic’
international law, at least not when it comes to defining the effect of treaty
provisions in the domestic legal orders. They do not distinguish between EU
law and ordinary treaty law, and extend the favourable treatment of EU law to
ordinary treaty law.
3.
The impact of
Van Gend en Loos
in other treaty
systems
Van Gend en Loos
along with its twin
Costa
v
ENEL
have been crucial in
the enforcement of EU law, taking it out of the province of the executive and
international relations. One would think, thus, that other Treaty systems and
other international courts would be tempted to follow suit and hand judg-
ments to a similar effect, i.e. that they would ‘copy’ or ‘mimick’
Van Gend en
Loos
. The ECJ with its compulsory jurisdiction, its direct links with national
courts via the preliminary reference procedure in combination with direct
effect and primacy of EU law and the enforcement procedure, has shown the
world that combining domestic enforcement before national courts (private
vigilance), with international legal oversight before international courts (pub-
lic vigilance) contributes to making international law more effective and to
promoting compliance. Several international organisations have in fact cop-
ied or emulated the ECJ model. In a recent article, Karen Alter has found 11
so-called ‘European style international courts’, international courts emulat-
ing the ECJ model (
14
). The Andean Tribunal of Justice (
15
) and the Court of
Justice of the East African Community (
16
) offer interesting examples of this,
and it has been demonstrated that the ECJ decision in
Van Gend en Loos
has
directly influenced the design of the system and the case-law of the relevant
court.
(
14
) To Alter, ‘European style ICs exist where international legal rules are part of national legal
orders, and where national and international judges mutually converse about the application
of these rules in concrete cases’: ‘
The Global Spread of European Style International Courts’
,
35
West European Politics
(2012), 135-154, at 135.
(
15
) K.J. Alter, L.R. Helfer and O. Saldías, ‘
Transplanting the European Court of Justice: The
Experience of the Andean Tribunal of Justice’
, 60
AJCL
(2012), 629-664; L.R. Helfer and
K.J. Alter, ‘
The Andean Tribunal of Justice and its Interlocutors: Understanding Preliminary
Reference Patterns in the Andean Community’
, 41
NYU Journal of International Law and
Politics
(2009), 872-930.
(
16
) A.P. van der Mei, ‘Regional Integration: The Contribution of the Court of Justice of the East
African Community’, 69
ZaöRV
(2009), 403-425.
