The Community Experience

Abstract

Community law has fared as well in the French courts as one could legitimately have expected. Several early lower court decisions took a cavalier attitude and both the Criminal Chamber and the Conseil d’État have failed to refer prejudicial questions to the Court of Justice under article 177 in the cases which have involved the most substantial questions of Community law. However, by the end of 1972 various French courts had referred sixteen prejudicial questions to the Court of Justice, including two from the Cour de Cassation and one from the Conseil d’État.¹ Furthermore, in other cases in which no prejudicial question has been asked, the courts have begun to apply Community law as the applicable norm.