55
Deuxième séance de travail — Les retombées
Second working session — The impact
The Autonomy of the EU Legal
Order —
Fifty Years After
Van Gend
Ingolf Pernice
PROFESSOR, HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY, BERLIN
1.
Introduction
These days we celebrate the 50
th
birthday of the judgment in
Van
Gend en Loos
(
1
). This case, in some way, shaped the history of European Inte-
gration more than any other policy, leader or judgment. While, after the entry
into force of the EEC Treaty, governments hesitated to give effect to what was
agreed upon, the ECJ took seriously the spirit and intentions of this unprec-
edented constituent text.
If the EEC-Treaty established – in the words of Walter Hallstein – a
‘Rechtsgemeinschaft’ (
2
), it means that the basis of this revolutionary con-
struct, where sovereignty is pooled beyond the nation-state, is the law – and
that the judiciary is to play a central role in it. Thus, it was for the ECJ to give
(
1
) ECJ Case 26/62
Van Gend en Loos
.
(
2
) See Walter Hallstein
, Die Europäische Gemeinschaft
, 1st ed. (Düsseldorf, Econ-Verlag,
1973) 31 ff.; cf. ECJ Case 294/83
Les Verts
[1986] ECR 1339, paragraph 23: ‘The European
Economic Community is a Community based on the rule of law’. For further developments:
Ingolf Pernice,
Begründung und Konsolidierung der Europäischen Gemeinschaft als
Rechtsgemeinschaft
, in: Manfred Zuleeg (ed.),
Der Beitrag Walter Hallsteins zur Zukunft
Europas, Referate zu Ehren von Walter
Hallstein
, Baden-Baden (Nomos) 2003, S. 56-70,
available as WHI-Paper 9/01.
INTERVENTIONS ◊
INTERVENTIONS
