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The Constitution and the Primacy of EU Law

The constitution Article I-10: Union law
1. The Constitution, and law adopted by the Union’s Institutions in
exercising competences conferred on it, shall have primacy over the law of
the Member States.
2. Member States shall take all appropriate measures, general or particular,
to ensure fulfilment of the obligations flowing from the Constitution or
resulting from the Union Institutions’ acts.

From the governments GUIDE TO THE EUROPEAN UNION
Once an EU law is agreed by all member countries it takes precedence over laws of the member countries. This is known as the primacy of European law. Britain accepted this principle when we joined in 1973 and we have supported it ever since.
Without it, any country could ignore European decisions that it disliked by passing national laws to undermine them. That would make European agreements pointless. So when laws have been agreed at European level, all EU member countries’ laws - including British laws - must be consistent with them.

Dr Klaus-Dieter Borchardt of the Directorate-General for Education and Culture

What happens if a provision of Community law conflicts with a rule of national law? Such a conflict between Community law and national law can be settled only if one gives way to the other. Community legislation contains no express provision on the question. None of the Community treaties contains a provision stating, for example, that Community law overrides national law.

After all, precious little would remain of the Community legal order if it were to be subordinated to national law. Community rules could be set aside by any national law. There would no longer be any question of the uniform and equal application of Community law in all Member States.

So this concept of the primacy of EU law over British law has never before been agreed by any British Government. Britain has in fact allowed the primacy of EU Law by not arguing against it but the only reason we have this concept in the first place is because the ECJ says so.

In ‘Costa v ENEL’, the Court made two important observations regarding the relationship between community law and national law:
1. The Member States have definitively transferred sovereign rights to a Community created by them. They cannot reverse this process by means of subsequent unilateral measures which are inconsistent with the Community concept.
2. It is a principle of the Treaty that no Member State may call into question the status of Community law as a system uniformly and generally applicable throughout the Community.
The Court has since consistently upheld this finding and has, in fact, developed it further in one respect. Whereas the ‘Costa’ judgment was concerned only with the question of the primacy of Community law over ordinary national laws, the Court confirmed the principle of primacy also with regard to the relationship between Community law and national constitutional law.

So although no government has agreed to this we have the primacy of EU law the reason it is necessary is because

“Without it, any country could ignore European decisions that it disliked by passing national laws to undermine them. That would make European agreements pointless. So when laws have been agreed at European level, all EU member countries’ laws - including British laws - must be consistent with them”.

However, the constitutional courts of Germany and Italy initially refused to accept the primacy of Community law over national constitutional law, in particular regarding the guaranteed protection of fundamental rights. They withdrew their objections only after the protection of fundamental rights in the Community legal order had reached a standard that corresponded in essence to that of their national constitutions. In its judgment of 12 October 1993.

In other words the constitutional courts in Germany and Italy did not accept the principal of the Supremacy of EU law, EU law in fact had to reflect their Constitutional rights not the other way round, this principal was confirmed later with the Treaty of Maastricht, when the German Constitutional Court made it quite clear that it had not in any way‘ surrendered’ its jurisdiction in determining the applicability of secondary Community legislation in Germany, and only the German Constitutional Court is competent to decide that issue - and concern matters in which, in the opinion of the German court, the treaty gives it authority.

The constitutional court also made it clear that it did not accept as valid within Germany any Community legal act which had been adopted merely because of the ‘useful effect’ of Community powers and on the basis of a broad interpretation of this concept. It was therefore the task of the constitutional court to examine whether legal acts of
Community bodies and institutions remained within or exceeded the limits of Germany’s sovereign rights.

So the EU Supremacy in Law is not as the British government would like us to believe something that we accepted as part of the EU treaties, it is something imposed by the ECJ and cannot have the effect the government say, of making all states obey the same laws because Germany, and to a certain extent Italy have refused to accept the principal, which must mean that it is entirely in our own governments province to either accept or reject any laws emanating from the EU

The government tells us that as the primacy of EU law has been in place since 1972 obviously relying on the possible establishment of legal custom as a means to say that as it is established custom we must accept it.

However there are considerable limitations on its becoming established in the context of Community law, however.
The first is the existence of a special procedure for the amendment of the Treaties (Article 48 EU). This does not rule out the possible emergence of legal custom, but it does make the criteria according to which a practice is deemed to have been followed and accepted for a substantial period much harder to meet. Another hurdle to the establishment of legal custom in the Community institutions is the fact that any action by an institution may derive its validity only from the Treaties, and not from that institution’s actual conduct or any intention on its part to create legal relations. This means that, at the level of the Treaties, legal custom can under no circumstances be established by the Community institutions.

The proposed “constitution” will however formally enshrine the primacy of EU law. The British government claims that EU “law” is already supreme But that is not so. It is quite clear that the ECJ, which as a creature of a treaty among sovereign powers, cannot then tell those sovereign powers that they are no longer sovereign. And the German Constitutional Court, has on several occasions made it clear that German law is supreme in Germany rejecting the principal and the claims by the ECJ.

In Britain, we do not have a constitutional court the ultimate constitutional authority is the sovereign. It is perfectly open to the Queen to instruct judges, that it is their duty to disregard the pretensions of the EU unless the Crown-in-Parliament specifically tells them not to, and to try cases on the basis of the law of the land and on that basis alone. In so doing, she and her government would in no way be breaching the current EU treaty, for there is nothing in that treaty that supports the claims made by the ECJ.

But all that would change dramatically if the EU Constitution were ratified.
In the Coronation Oath, the sovereign swears before God to preserve the laws and customs of her people. The EU constitution is inconsistent with the preservation of these laws and customs. If the Queen accepts it, then we would be well within our rights as a people, to reopen the constitutional debates of 1688. The doctrine of the Glorious Revolution was that James II, by subverting the laws and customs of England, contrary to his Coronation Oath, was guilty of perjury and was deemed to have abdicated. So it is obvious that by accepting this EU Constitution the Queen will in fact be accepting that her agreement with the people of Britain no longer has any standing, by so doing she will be divesting herself and her line from the monarchy of Great Britain.

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Filed under : The Best of the Rest
By Ken
On December 6, 2004
At 4:29 pm
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