23
The Judgment – Framing the
Argument
Marise Cremona
PROFESSOR, EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, FLORENCE
Première séance de travail — L’arrêt
First working session — The judgment
The significance of the
Van Gend en Loos
case certainly merits the
close reconsideration of its impact and implications in this volume and the
conference, on which it is based, organised to mark the 50
th
anniversary of the
judgment. The judgment itself provides the focus of the initial contributions:
the shaping of the judgment in the contribution by Professor Paolo Gori who
was at the time a
referendaire
at the Court and so has uniquely first-hand rec-
ollections; and its immediate impact in the contribution by Professor Jacques
Ziller.
The case is in fact so significant that is perhaps over-familiar, and it has
been a worthwhile and interesting exercise to re-read both the judgment and
the opinion of Advocate General Roemer. As the late Pierre Pescatore com-
mented, referring to
Van Gend en Loos
on the occasion of another 50
th
anni-
versary, our habit of reading and citing judicial rulings ‘in excerpts, as if they
were legislative texts’ is a mistake (
1
). Here I should like to reflect very briefly
on the way the case was framed, by the Court itself, but also in the reasoning
of the Advocate General and in the arguments of the Commission and others
submitting observations.
(
1
) P. Pescatore, ‘Van Gend en Loos, 5 February 1963 – A View from Within’ in M. Poiares
Maduro and L. Azoulai (eds)
The Past and Future of EU Law – The Classics of EU Law
Revisited on the 50
th
Anniversary of the Rome Treaty
, Hart Publishing, 2010.
Présidente de séance ◊
Chairperson
