169
Troisième séance de travail — Les perspectives
Third working session — The future prospects
The International Legal Order:
Black holes, fifty shades of
grey, or extending
Van Gend en
Loos
?
Piet Eeckhout
Professor, University College, London
Van Gend en Loos
and international law
The international legal order does not generally have ‘direct effect’,
in the meaning of
Van Gend en Loos
. Indeed, the Court in its judgment ex-
pressly distinguished EU law from international law, as constituting a new le-
gal order of international law. The ‘of international law’ was later removed (
1
).
EU law constitutes a new legal order, full stop. The EU law birth giving act
involved immediate separation. EU law created rights under national law, au-
tomatically, inherently, and comprehensively, something which international
law at the time certainly did not accomplish.
After
Van Gend en Loos
it took a mere nine years before the Court was
asked exactly what the separation of EU law from international law actually
meant. In
International Fruit Company
the Court recognized that the (then)
EEC could be bound under international law, for example by an agreement
such as the GATT of 1947 (a special case, because the EEC never became a
formal party) (
2
). Later on the Court held that international agreements
(
1
) Joined Cases 90/63 and 91/63
Commission
v
Luxembourg and Belgium
[1964] ECR 625, at
631.
(
2
) Joined Cases 21/72 to 24/72 [1972] ECR 1219.
INTERVENTIONS ◊
INTERVENTIONS
