European Law
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The doctrine of supremacy is not explicitly written into the Treaties. It is a doctrine that has been developed by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) through its case law, as a remedy to one of the questions that has frustrated the process of integration since the Community was formed: if there is a conflict between European law and national law, which law would prevail? Although acceptance of the doctrine has been at times hindered by national courts , the logic employed by the ECJ is highly compelling, and is the foremost reason for its broad recognition in national courts (provided that the EC law is directly effective). The arguments for the supremacy of EC law can be divided in two: firstly, arguments relating to the nature of the Community, and secondly, arguments relating to the purpose or effet utile of the Community. Both of these arguments are found in the case law.
With regard to the former, the ECJ began to argue in tentative steps toward supremacy in the case of Van Gent and Loos . Brought in front of the ECJ under article 234, it was primarily concerned whether or not Article 25 was directly effective, however, the court went on to pass comment on the nature of the EC:
The Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which the states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields.
Here the ECJ is saying that the EC is a new and distinct legal entity, and in the same way that the EC cannot be thought the as other international treaties, EC law cannot be thought of in the same light as other international law. In other words, under Article 249 the Parliaments of the Member States have transferred, voluntarily, some sovereignty and competences to an international Community and therefore the law that is created by that Community, in the specified areas, will necessarily have a greater impact on national courts.
This was confirmed in the case of Costa ...