124
Maciej Szpunar
Deuxième séance de travail — Les retombées
1.
Uniform application of the EU law
If I were asked what was the most profound impact of the judgment in the
case of
Van Gend en Loos,
I would say that it was the principle of uniform ap-
plication of Community law in all Member States. In this respect, I fully agree
with all speakers that emphasised this phenomenon. We know exactly from
the conclusions of Advocate General Roemer as well as from the facts revealed
by Mr Paolo Gori that the issues of uniform application of EC law and its
supremacy were at stake in the deliberation of
Van Gend en Loos
. One has to
remember, however, that the principle of supremacy was explicitly confirmed
one year later in the
Costa
v
ENEL
decision.
The reason why I am referring to the principle of uniform application of
EU law is that the enlargement of 2004 brought about two challenges to this
principle.
The first one resulted from the lack of official translation of some small
parts of EU legislation. I must remind that the enlargements of 2004 increased
the number of official languages of the EU from 11 to 21. The Court dealt with
the problem to what extent the obligations, resulting from EU legislation that
was unpublished in some official languages, may not be imposed on individ
uals (Case C-161/06
Skoma-Lux
, Case C-410/09
Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa
,
Case C-146/11
Pimix
).
The Court admitted that, in general, obligations stemming from the leg-
islation unpublished in an official language of a new Member State cannot be
imposed on individuals in that state. It follows that the lack of the publication
of the legislation in one or some official languages does not affect the applica-
tion of this legislation in other Member States. This statement of the Court
might be difficult to reconcile with the principles established in the famous
decision in the case of
CILFIT
(Case 283/81). In paragraph 18 of the later deci-
sion the Court reminded that EU legislation is drafted in several languages
and that the different language versions are all equally authentic. Therefore
the proper interpretation of a provision of EU law should involve a compari-
son of the different language versions. The question arises how a judge, either
of a national court or of the EU judicial body, should proceed to this exercise
if not all official language versions are available.
The second challenge to uniform application of the law of EU stems from
two controversial decisions of constitutional bodies of two new Member
