Yikes, when did I write that post?
Brexited | the worst threads live the longest
- Thread starter Silva
- Start date
Yikes, when did I write that post?
Which is why the establishment is so distraught that we're leaving. I prefer the idea of simply voting for a politician whose policies I like, rather than one who will decide which EU legislation we adopt.
Clearly they did. HTH
You knew what you were going to get. In out ref. I dont see how you didnt know that
So you(the UK) didn't vote for Cameron?
I don't understand what difference this makes?
where did you find this number and what do you think they mean with "laws" in this context?
The two people you mentioned are the same, in that case it was Cameron.
Where have I mentioned the 'underclass' really? When I write about people 'knowing better' I am referring to economists, politicians whose been working in Brussels for decades (and that mean actually working and investing time/effort to make the project work not those who simply turned out there for the paycheck and people like myself who bother learning about the EU, its weaknesses, its strengths and how it works. Most of these people were against Brexit.
Now if you expect these people to take those who think that its possible to conduct a jumbo deal with Turkey despite knowing that its not possible (Turkey is in the custom union) or to believe that its possible to conduct trade deals with individual EU countries despite that's also not possible, seriously, then I am sorry but that's not possible. Time and time again the Brexit experts had been saying these sort of porkies which clearly spanks of ignorance of the world around them. They can't expect us to take them or those who voted for this madness seriously
There are undoubtedly arguments against the EU, particularly as large political organisations are inherently less democratic. I share many of those opinions and probably wouldn't have voted in, but the inevitable consequences of leaving meant I voted remain.
However, the election was not remotely fought on such principles. It was fought on immigration and some vague sense of sovereignty. Given the behaviour of the mainstream media, with their overt bigotry, and the political leaders of the leave campaign saying shit such as "we're sick of experts" and blatantly lying, it is understandable if some remainers (and absolutely not all) get a bit superior.
I think people also struggle to understand why the most vulnerable in society largely voted leave in non urban areas, given that they will suffer most in the post Brexit Tory stranglehold as benefits are slashed and the costs of the economy crash are passed on to them. This results in the underclass category term which I don't like either.
Reality is that educated and principled people leave too. In large numbers. I question their motives for doing so and don't believe it's because they're like Dennis Skinner in general.
You actually want to throw a disabled person down the stairs and then you've got the cheek to complain about the so called hatred the remainers are showing against Brexiteers. I wonder how you can take yourself seriously. Same thing can be said about the mods in this forum for letting this horrible post pass. FFS some of us got a ban for passing jokes about Pogba's mum.
He probably did propose that the Eurozone does do that at some point in the past 7 years. Given the facts surrounding Greece's membership of the eurozone that can hardly count as disgusting though, can it?
(He absolutely never implied that he had the power to do it though, nor did he try to force it to happen... I have many grievances towards Schäuble myself and would love to see him retire soon, so i'm done defending him now. He absolutely never publicly said anything nearly as nasty as " I'd like to push Wolfgang Schäuble down the stairs in his wheelchair." though, and justifying that statement by saying he said something "disgusting" is slightly amusing. )
I can't say what others will do but I certainly won't vote Tories next time round. TBF I ended up voting labour during last elections either and that despite being pro business, staunchly anti union and pretty conservative myself. The reason being that I thought that Brexit was stupid and them giving a referendum on it just for them to win another election as disgusting.
When I live in a country, I wish for it the best and I try to vote accordingly.
Not that my vote will matter. I live in a region where the Tories basically rule so my vote is not even worth the very paper its printed on. Thank god the UK has left the EU to 'get control'
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He has been accused of doing exactly that by the US but I don't know more about it.
By the US government? (I genuinely didn't know about that, any links?)
Whoops, that should have been Bury.
I was going to say something about the disconnect between generations but the post has vanished...
I thought you were against negativity?
We don't have politicians deciding policy. We've now got Nissan
From what I understand it comes from this, but Schauble isn't specifically mentioned.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...eaders-tried-to-commit-financial-suicide.html
If you are going to have a free market you are going to have a lot of laws to make sure products meet the same standards across those nations. Now we'll have 2 sets of the law (ours and theirs) which just adds to the costs of business
I knew that was one of a plethora of shit policy promises, yes. I am not, as you know, suggesting I was unaware that the Tories lead on a referendum to combat UKIP and placate a wing of their own party. I am stating it is not the only thing voted on in a GE.
One of my posts has disappeared too. I guess the Caf is giving up on this thread. It is probably more sensible than us.
Yes, my use of the word fantasize is the laughable bit.
Fantasize
Our own pro-EU politicians. for the most part.
There should be a mandated break from the thread every few days. Once people in here build up a head of steam, words can all too easily go too far.
It's just as well that the CE Isn't the name of a pub with a debating society.
Cons+UKIP were almost 50%, and could be pushed over the edge with smaller right-wing parties (which I'm assuming were Euroscpetics)
Interesting read, thanks for that! Definitely gives an insight into the american perception of the crisis, although things like "Germany, the German public, were not going to support a bigger financial firewall, more money for Europe, if Berlusconi was presiding over that country." paint a very simplistic understanding of the politics behind european currency policy and limit the value of his assertions (Geithner, forget about Evans-Pritchard).
(Germany, the German public, was not going to support more money for Europe no matter whoever was presiding over Italy. They could have announced Merkel as the new Cesar and the German public still wouldn't want to... The big fear in Germany is that the EU becomes what they call a "Transferunion", i.e a constant stream of cash from one country's coffers to another's. I don't doubt they tried to apply pressure on Berlusconi, but Geithner must have taken a joke for reality there.)
Cons+UKIP were almost 50%, and could be pushed over the edge with smaller right-wing parties (which I'm assuming were Euroscpetics)
IIRC, the Greens were also in favour of a referendum when it was proposed.
And by way of some historical context, all of the main parties promised a referendum on the EU Constitution. Their subsequent failure to hold one for the Lisbon Treaty only added fuel to the Eurosceptic fire. Such deceit contributed to where we find ourselves today; both in terms of BrexIt, and the distrust of MPs.
Gutted I missed Marr this morning. I thought all the noise was the fireworks but apparently it was UKippers' heads exploding when Farage admitted the referendum was advisory.
Go on I'll keep up with your pretence, highly amusing watching you dig a hole for yourself every time you post.
Can you tell me whereabouts in the UK you live.
Three months might seem a long long time for a child.
You ought to tell all the other Brit expats and non-British people that they don't know what they're talking about either. Poor old Stan's lived in Holland for about 20 years I believe, he hasn't got a clue either.
People like us don't have access to the internet or information, we don't have families who live in the UK, we have no knowledge of what goes on in the world.
You wise people who have lived all over Britain and know about every aspect of British life can certainly teach us a few things, or do you get your information from the Daily Mail
depends on your interpretation of negativity
Despite me loathing some eu politicians I am very positive about my own lot and will make whatever situation I am in, work for me.
I am not 24/7 angry about it either. I can do very little to change it, no vote, no voice.
Do you realise that the member states are the ones who have granted EU that power for good reason, i.e. harmonisation of regulation in order to facilitate trade? Non-tariff trade barriers, such as different technical standards and administrative rules in every European country for products and services of various kinds for little to no reason, are the largest disrupter of international trade.
By not adopting EU legislation you make cross-border trade suffer, simple as that. The EU does not make stuff up out of cruelty, it does so to make life easier and less bureaucratic for EU companies and citizens. Instead of adapting to 28 sets of legislation every time you are dealing with a European country, which most people do a lot, a British company or citizen only needs to know one.
EU Law - the ECJ and primacy over national laws
In this article, Martin Howe QC explains the basics of EU law:
What is the key feature that makes the EU treaties different in kind from every other international Treaty to which this country belongs, and quite possibly makes them unique in the world? To this question, a lawyer can give only one answer: the key feature is EU law, formerly known as Community law - a system of law that penetrates inside the member states and takes precedence over national laws in the domestic courts of the member states.
Many treaties bind states with rules at the international or external level – but it is this internal penetration which marks out the European treaties (formerly the Treaty of Rome) as different from other treaties. In fact, this internal penetration is a classic characteristic, not of international treaties, but of the internal constitutional arrangements of federal states. And like a federal state, the European Union has its own supreme court, the European Court of Justice, which has the ultimate power of decision over both the content and the scope of EU law.
This court is not a neutral or impartial interpreter of the rules. If we look back over the nearly 60 years since the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957, it allows us to see clearly how profoundly that original Treaty has been changed by the actions of the ECJ. I am not speaking here of the many changes to its text which have been made by successive amending treaties such as the Single European Act, Maastricht or Lisbon. I am talking of the profound changes in the effective content of the Treaty which have occurred as a result of a process of so-called “interpretation” of the Treaty by the Court.
The key point that Treaty articles have direct effect inside the member states is nowhere stated in the Treaty, but was decided by the European Court in the Van Gend en Loos case in 1963. It said: "The Treaty is more than an agreement which merely creates mutual obligations between the contracting states. This view is confirmed by the preamble to the Treaty which refers not only to governments but to peoples. ... the Community constitutes a new legal order in international law for whose benefit the states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and the subjects of which comprise not only the Member States but also their nationals." Shortly afterwards in 1964 in the Costa v. ENEL case, the Court ruled that Community law over-rides conflicting national laws: "The transfer by the States from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system of rights and obligations arising under the Treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights ... " By 1970, in the Internationale Handelsgesellschaft case, the European Court had declared its view that Community law should take precedence even over the constitutional laws of the Member States -- including basic entrenched laws guaranteeing fundamental rights.
When we joined the EEC in 1973
These basic principles were well established in Community law before the UK joined the EEC at the beginning of 1973. The European Communities Act 1972 was passed through Parliament in order to allow the UK to join, and two of its key provisions gave effect within the United Kingdom to the so-called "direct effect" of Community law, and the doctrine that that law has primacy over other laws.
Section 2(1) of the 1972 Act says that rights arising from the EU treaties and under the system of law under the treaties are to be enforced and followed in UK courts: "2 (1) All such rights, powers, liabilities, obligations and restrictions from time to time created or arising by or under the Treaties, and all such remedies and procedures from time to time provided for by or under the Treaties, as in accordance with the Treaties are without further enactment to be given legal effect or used in the United Kingdom shall be recognised and available in law, and be enforced, allowed and followed accordingly; ..." Another and even more fundamental provision is contained in subsection 2(4), and this reads: "(4) ... any enactment passed or to be passed, other than one contained in this part of this Act, shall be construed and have effect subject to the foregoing provisions of this section;"
The implications of these provisions in the 1972 Act and the doctrine of primacy of Community law do not seem to have been fully understood or appreciated by many politicians until they were graphically illustrated in the Factortame case
That case was prompted by Spanish fishing interests who registered a UK off-the-shelf company called 'Factortame Ltd' and used that nominally British company to register fishing vessels under the British flag so they could then fish against the UK quota under the Common Fisheries Policy. Parliament passed the Merchant Shipping Act 1988 which placed restictions on the registration of vessels under the British flag when the companies owning them were not actually British owned or controlled.
Factortame challenged these parts of the Merchant Shipping Act 1988 as incompatible with Community law and asked for an interim order suspending the Act. The case went to the UK's highest court, the House of Lords, where Lord Bridge said that the effect of section 2(4) of the 1972 Act (quoted above) was that later Act of Parliament such as the 1988 Act would be disapplied if they were inconsistent with rights under Community law: R (Factortame) v Sec of State for Transport [1990] AC 85 at 140B-D. The Lords however were doubtful whether that gave UK courts the power to suspend Acts of Parliament on an interim basis and referred the question of whether they should have such a power as a matter of Community law to the ECJ, who ruled (Case 213/89; [1990] 3 CMLR 1 at 30): "a national court which, in a case before it concerning Community law, considers that the sole obstacle which precludes it from granting interim relief is a rule of national law must set aside that rule." The effect of the doctrine of primacy of Community law as illustrated by the Factortame case were explained in graphic terms by Mr Justice Hoffmann in Stoke on Trent v. B & Q [1990] 3 CMLR 31 at 34 in the following terms: "The Treaty of Rome is the supreme law of this country, taking precedence over Acts of Parliament. Our entry into the Community meant that (subject to our undoubted but probably theoretical right to withdraw from the Community altogether) Parliament surrendered its sovereign right to legislate contrary to the Treaty on the matters of social and economic policy which it regulated."
In this article, Martin Howe QC explains the basics of EU law:
- how, unlike normal international treaties, it penetrates into the domestic courts and internal legal systems of Member States;
- how it has 'primacy' and claims to override all national laws including fundamental and constitutional laws;
- how the European Court of Justice has set about expanding the scope of its own powers and the scope of EU law by creative and politically driven 'interpretation' of the treaties and of EU laws.
What is the key feature that makes the EU treaties different in kind from every other international Treaty to which this country belongs, and quite possibly makes them unique in the world? To this question, a lawyer can give only one answer: the key feature is EU law, formerly known as Community law - a system of law that penetrates inside the member states and takes precedence over national laws in the domestic courts of the member states.
Many treaties bind states with rules at the international or external level – but it is this internal penetration which marks out the European treaties (formerly the Treaty of Rome) as different from other treaties. In fact, this internal penetration is a classic characteristic, not of international treaties, but of the internal constitutional arrangements of federal states. And like a federal state, the European Union has its own supreme court, the European Court of Justice, which has the ultimate power of decision over both the content and the scope of EU law.
This court is not a neutral or impartial interpreter of the rules. If we look back over the nearly 60 years since the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957, it allows us to see clearly how profoundly that original Treaty has been changed by the actions of the ECJ. I am not speaking here of the many changes to its text which have been made by successive amending treaties such as the Single European Act, Maastricht or Lisbon. I am talking of the profound changes in the effective content of the Treaty which have occurred as a result of a process of so-called “interpretation” of the Treaty by the Court.
The key point that Treaty articles have direct effect inside the member states is nowhere stated in the Treaty, but was decided by the European Court in the Van Gend en Loos case in 1963. It said: "The Treaty is more than an agreement which merely creates mutual obligations between the contracting states. This view is confirmed by the preamble to the Treaty which refers not only to governments but to peoples. ... the Community constitutes a new legal order in international law for whose benefit the states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and the subjects of which comprise not only the Member States but also their nationals." Shortly afterwards in 1964 in the Costa v. ENEL case, the Court ruled that Community law over-rides conflicting national laws: "The transfer by the States from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system of rights and obligations arising under the Treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights ... " By 1970, in the Internationale Handelsgesellschaft case, the European Court had declared its view that Community law should take precedence even over the constitutional laws of the Member States -- including basic entrenched laws guaranteeing fundamental rights.
When we joined the EEC in 1973
These basic principles were well established in Community law before the UK joined the EEC at the beginning of 1973. The European Communities Act 1972 was passed through Parliament in order to allow the UK to join, and two of its key provisions gave effect within the United Kingdom to the so-called "direct effect" of Community law, and the doctrine that that law has primacy over other laws.
Section 2(1) of the 1972 Act says that rights arising from the EU treaties and under the system of law under the treaties are to be enforced and followed in UK courts: "2 (1) All such rights, powers, liabilities, obligations and restrictions from time to time created or arising by or under the Treaties, and all such remedies and procedures from time to time provided for by or under the Treaties, as in accordance with the Treaties are without further enactment to be given legal effect or used in the United Kingdom shall be recognised and available in law, and be enforced, allowed and followed accordingly; ..." Another and even more fundamental provision is contained in subsection 2(4), and this reads: "(4) ... any enactment passed or to be passed, other than one contained in this part of this Act, shall be construed and have effect subject to the foregoing provisions of this section;"
The implications of these provisions in the 1972 Act and the doctrine of primacy of Community law do not seem to have been fully understood or appreciated by many politicians until they were graphically illustrated in the Factortame case
That case was prompted by Spanish fishing interests who registered a UK off-the-shelf company called 'Factortame Ltd' and used that nominally British company to register fishing vessels under the British flag so they could then fish against the UK quota under the Common Fisheries Policy. Parliament passed the Merchant Shipping Act 1988 which placed restictions on the registration of vessels under the British flag when the companies owning them were not actually British owned or controlled.
Factortame challenged these parts of the Merchant Shipping Act 1988 as incompatible with Community law and asked for an interim order suspending the Act. The case went to the UK's highest court, the House of Lords, where Lord Bridge said that the effect of section 2(4) of the 1972 Act (quoted above) was that later Act of Parliament such as the 1988 Act would be disapplied if they were inconsistent with rights under Community law: R (Factortame) v Sec of State for Transport [1990] AC 85 at 140B-D. The Lords however were doubtful whether that gave UK courts the power to suspend Acts of Parliament on an interim basis and referred the question of whether they should have such a power as a matter of Community law to the ECJ, who ruled (Case 213/89; [1990] 3 CMLR 1 at 30): "a national court which, in a case before it concerning Community law, considers that the sole obstacle which precludes it from granting interim relief is a rule of national law must set aside that rule." The effect of the doctrine of primacy of Community law as illustrated by the Factortame case were explained in graphic terms by Mr Justice Hoffmann in Stoke on Trent v. B & Q [1990] 3 CMLR 31 at 34 in the following terms: "The Treaty of Rome is the supreme law of this country, taking precedence over Acts of Parliament. Our entry into the Community meant that (subject to our undoubted but probably theoretical right to withdraw from the Community altogether) Parliament surrendered its sovereign right to legislate contrary to the Treaty on the matters of social and economic policy which it regulated."
Continued:
The ECJ further advances its powers
Having secured the basic principles that Community law penetrates inside the legal systems of Member States and takes precedence over all national laws in the courts of the Member States, the ECJ went on to build its powers further after our entry in 1973.
In the 1987 Foto-Frost case, the European Court ruled that national courts had no power to question the validity Community measures and reserved that power exclusively to itself, even though there was nothing in the Treaty or in general principles of international law which would require states to recognise the validity of acts which are outside the powers conferred by the Treaty.
The EEC was (mistakenly) regarded as just the "common market" by many people in this country and during the 1976 referendum campaign it was presented almost exclusively in those terms. But the ECJt made it more and more clear that it regarded a European common market not as an end in itself, but simply a means to a greater end.
The court spelled out its thinking in 1992 in the European Economic Area Agreement Case:
"An international treaty is to be interpreted not only on the basis of its wording, but in the light of its objectives. ... The Rome Treaty aims to achieve economic integration leading to the establishment of an internal market and economic and monetary union. Article 1 of the Single European Act makes it clear that the objective of all the Community treaties is to contribute together to making concrete progress towards European unity. It follows from the foregoing that the provisions of the Rome Treaty on free movement and competition, far from being an end in themselves, are only means for attaining those objectives. ... As the Court of Justice has consistently held, the Community treaties established a new legal order for the benefit of which the States have limited their sovereign rights, in ever wider fields, and the subjects of which comprise not only the member-States but also their nationals." (emphasis added) In the last sentence, the important change in wording from the 1963 Van Gend case should be noted. By 1992, “limited fields” had become “ever wider fields”, reflecting the Court’s endorsement of the doctrine that there can only ever be a one-way transfer of powers from the member states to the centre.
The Court has also expanded the powers of the Community/EU over the external relations of the member states. It developed a doctrine of implied external competence - that the Community had power to make external agreements relating to fields over which it had acquired internal competence. Furthermore, under this doctrine, the member states lose their own powers to conclude international agreements relating to areas of policy over which the Community (now EU) has attained an internal competence.
Whilst the ECJ has liberalised the internal market, it has often used its growing powers over the external trade of the member states in a way which inhibits the liberalisation of trade across the external borders of the EU.
In the 1998 Silhouette case, it interpreted the Trade Marks Directive as requiring member states to prohibit so-called “parallel imports” of genuine trade marked goods from non-member states when the proprietor of the mark has not consented to the marketing of his goods within the Community. This enables trade mark proprietors to prevent the importation of their own genuine goods into the EU from other countries where they have placed them on the market (e.g. Levi jeans in the USA), so enabling them to charge consumers within the EU a higher price than in other markets.
Similarly, in the field of regulations and technical standards, the ECJ has ruled in the 1999 Agrochemicals case that the UK is prohibited by EU law from licensing “parallel imports” from non-EU countries, even though the products are identical to agrochemicals licensed inside the EU and made by the same manufacturer.
The rationale of this “fortress Europe” mentality is baffling, and is particularly painful for a global trading nation such as the United Kingdom.
ECJ overcomes national vetoes by creative "interpretation"
Where the onward progress of European integration has been blocked by national vetoes, the Court has been willing to re-interpret the Treaty to make up for the lack of progress on the legislative front. In a whole series of tax cases, the Court invoked the general clauses of the Treaty on non-discrimination to strike down national tax legislation. An important example is the 2002 Lankhorst-Hohorst case on tax credits on payments by a subsidiary to its parent in another member state. What is significant is that the Court departed from its earlier cases which had decided that such arrangements were compatible with the Treaty.
The Treaty had not changed, but its meaning, according to the Court, had. Thus, the effective harmonisation of direct taxes proceeds step by step at the hands of the Court despite the UK’s theoretical veto on this area under the Treaty. The problem now is that ECJ's case law in this area makes it very difficult for national legislation effectively to tax the activities of multi-national companies who use tax avoidance structures set up for example under Luxembourg law.
In a 2005 environmental protection case, the Court decided that the EC could, under its first-pillar supranational law-making powers, specify and impose criminal offences and penalties in the very wide fields where the EC had an existing competence. The remarkable thing about this decision is that, if it is right, the EEC had these powers over criminal law from the day the Treaty of Rome was signed on 25 March 1957.
Yet if this had been suggested to those who signed the Treaty in 1957, or to those who signed Britain’s accession treaty in 1972, they would have laughed.
The ongoing process of expansion of powers by 'interpretation'
By looking back over time, we can see how powerful has been the effect of the rolling process of the ECJ's re-interpretation of the European Treaties, coupled with the doctrines of direct effect and primacy.
In more recent years, the ECJ has further extended the reach and scope of the EU law and of its own powers. Its most powerful new weapon in doing so is now the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
We shall be explaining how the court has made use of that Charter, and how it has effectively castrated the "opt out" with the UK thought it was getting from the effects of that Charter, in a further article.
http://www.lawyersforbritain.org/eulaw-ecj-primacy.shtml
The ECJ further advances its powers
Having secured the basic principles that Community law penetrates inside the legal systems of Member States and takes precedence over all national laws in the courts of the Member States, the ECJ went on to build its powers further after our entry in 1973.
In the 1987 Foto-Frost case, the European Court ruled that national courts had no power to question the validity Community measures and reserved that power exclusively to itself, even though there was nothing in the Treaty or in general principles of international law which would require states to recognise the validity of acts which are outside the powers conferred by the Treaty.
The EEC was (mistakenly) regarded as just the "common market" by many people in this country and during the 1976 referendum campaign it was presented almost exclusively in those terms. But the ECJt made it more and more clear that it regarded a European common market not as an end in itself, but simply a means to a greater end.
The court spelled out its thinking in 1992 in the European Economic Area Agreement Case:
"An international treaty is to be interpreted not only on the basis of its wording, but in the light of its objectives. ... The Rome Treaty aims to achieve economic integration leading to the establishment of an internal market and economic and monetary union. Article 1 of the Single European Act makes it clear that the objective of all the Community treaties is to contribute together to making concrete progress towards European unity. It follows from the foregoing that the provisions of the Rome Treaty on free movement and competition, far from being an end in themselves, are only means for attaining those objectives. ... As the Court of Justice has consistently held, the Community treaties established a new legal order for the benefit of which the States have limited their sovereign rights, in ever wider fields, and the subjects of which comprise not only the member-States but also their nationals." (emphasis added) In the last sentence, the important change in wording from the 1963 Van Gend case should be noted. By 1992, “limited fields” had become “ever wider fields”, reflecting the Court’s endorsement of the doctrine that there can only ever be a one-way transfer of powers from the member states to the centre.
The Court has also expanded the powers of the Community/EU over the external relations of the member states. It developed a doctrine of implied external competence - that the Community had power to make external agreements relating to fields over which it had acquired internal competence. Furthermore, under this doctrine, the member states lose their own powers to conclude international agreements relating to areas of policy over which the Community (now EU) has attained an internal competence.
Whilst the ECJ has liberalised the internal market, it has often used its growing powers over the external trade of the member states in a way which inhibits the liberalisation of trade across the external borders of the EU.
In the 1998 Silhouette case, it interpreted the Trade Marks Directive as requiring member states to prohibit so-called “parallel imports” of genuine trade marked goods from non-member states when the proprietor of the mark has not consented to the marketing of his goods within the Community. This enables trade mark proprietors to prevent the importation of their own genuine goods into the EU from other countries where they have placed them on the market (e.g. Levi jeans in the USA), so enabling them to charge consumers within the EU a higher price than in other markets.
Similarly, in the field of regulations and technical standards, the ECJ has ruled in the 1999 Agrochemicals case that the UK is prohibited by EU law from licensing “parallel imports” from non-EU countries, even though the products are identical to agrochemicals licensed inside the EU and made by the same manufacturer.
The rationale of this “fortress Europe” mentality is baffling, and is particularly painful for a global trading nation such as the United Kingdom.
ECJ overcomes national vetoes by creative "interpretation"
Where the onward progress of European integration has been blocked by national vetoes, the Court has been willing to re-interpret the Treaty to make up for the lack of progress on the legislative front. In a whole series of tax cases, the Court invoked the general clauses of the Treaty on non-discrimination to strike down national tax legislation. An important example is the 2002 Lankhorst-Hohorst case on tax credits on payments by a subsidiary to its parent in another member state. What is significant is that the Court departed from its earlier cases which had decided that such arrangements were compatible with the Treaty.
The Treaty had not changed, but its meaning, according to the Court, had. Thus, the effective harmonisation of direct taxes proceeds step by step at the hands of the Court despite the UK’s theoretical veto on this area under the Treaty. The problem now is that ECJ's case law in this area makes it very difficult for national legislation effectively to tax the activities of multi-national companies who use tax avoidance structures set up for example under Luxembourg law.
In a 2005 environmental protection case, the Court decided that the EC could, under its first-pillar supranational law-making powers, specify and impose criminal offences and penalties in the very wide fields where the EC had an existing competence. The remarkable thing about this decision is that, if it is right, the EEC had these powers over criminal law from the day the Treaty of Rome was signed on 25 March 1957.
Yet if this had been suggested to those who signed the Treaty in 1957, or to those who signed Britain’s accession treaty in 1972, they would have laughed.
The ongoing process of expansion of powers by 'interpretation'
By looking back over time, we can see how powerful has been the effect of the rolling process of the ECJ's re-interpretation of the European Treaties, coupled with the doctrines of direct effect and primacy.
In more recent years, the ECJ has further extended the reach and scope of the EU law and of its own powers. Its most powerful new weapon in doing so is now the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
We shall be explaining how the court has made use of that Charter, and how it has effectively castrated the "opt out" with the UK thought it was getting from the effects of that Charter, in a further article.
http://www.lawyersforbritain.org/eulaw-ecj-primacy.shtml
Who created that website. A 5 year old?
Is the European Court of Justice a legal or political institution now? | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/aug/10/european-court-justice-legal-political
One Brexiteer's view - got as far as the "1976 referendum campaign" - shame I voted in the 1975 referendum
"Just over 67% of voters supported the Labour government's campaign to stay in the EEC"
Amusing
My Dad is 80 next month he was born in 1936 his uncle was killed fighting to retake Caan and he was bombed during the war. Go on tell me again how stupid and racist he is because he voted leave which he did like most of the people of his generation and your mothers.