49
Deuxième séance de travail — Les retombées
Second working session — The impact
Introduction
Christian Tomuschat
PROFESSOR EMERITUS, HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY, BERLIN
Just when in 1963 I revised for a last time my doctoral thesis on the pro-
cedure of preliminary references (
1
), the Court handed down its judgment
in
Van Gend en Loos
(
2
). It confirmed the conclusion to which I had already
arrived: that to determine whether a provision of the EEC Treaty was self-
executing had to be classified as a matter governed by Community law and
not by domestic law. Obviously, a simple truth can have far-reaching and fairly
dramatic consequences. Having been called to act as the chairman of this sec-
ond working session, I have to confine myself to putting forth a few general
thoughts of introduction to the reports and to the general discussion.
Assessing the developments entailed by
Van Gend en Loos
from a consti-
tutional perspective, I would like to focus on four general consequences. Fifty
years after that innovative judgment the general lines of the ensuing develop-
ments have become crystal clear.
Van Gend en Loos
was one of those founding
determinations that have profoundly shaped the constitutional architecture
of the European integration process. Maybe the lessons drawn in
Van Gend
en Loos
would have become inevitable in the long run in any event. However,
a special tribute is due to the farsightedness of the judges who, against stiff
(
1
) Christian Tomuschat,
Die gerichtliche Vorabentscheidung nach den Verträgen über die
europäischen Gemeinschaften
(Köln & Berlin: Carl Heymanns, 1964) 104.
(
2
) Case 26/62 [1963] ECR 1.
PRÉSIDENT DE SÉANCE ◊
CHAIRPERSON
