Abstract
When push comes to shove, who are the true masters of the EU — who is sovereign and has the final authority? With whom does the Kompetenz — Kompetenz rest, that is, the competence to determine the limits of the Community’s competences? Who — when seen with the benefit of hindsight — has governed the overall direction of the Community since its inception? These are, as we have seen in the previous chapters, the most important questions confronting the theoretically ambitious lawyer and political scientist today. If we glance back at the previous discussion, however, we quickly end up with one camp pointing to the member states and another looking to the Community structures. But there may be good reasons to pause at this point and ask whether questions such as these can be answered satisfactorily. If we leave the complex issue of defining who has the final competence in Europe today, will it then be possible to identify a single powerful actor or group of actors as the main vehicle of integration? Or would it be more to the point to say that the entire process has been so complex, diffuse and unpredictable that we are fundamentally unequipped to point to one actor or group of actors as the main driver of the Community experiment as it has evolved?
Our sovereignty has been taken away by the European Court of Justice. It has made decisions impinging on our statute of law and says that we are to obey its decisions instead of our own statute law. … The European Court has held that all European directives are binding within each of the European countries; and must be enforced by national courts; even though they are contrary to our national law. … No longer is European law an incoming tide flowing up the estuaries of England. It is now like a tidal wave bringing down our sea walls and flowing inland over our fields and houses — to the dismay of all.
(Denning, 1990)
The European Economic Community was established in 1958 with primarily economic objectives in mind. However, economic integration, to the extent envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, was not and could not have been a politically neutral idea. The dismantling of national frontiers and the free movement of the factors of production have perforce a subversive character. They contain the seeds of destruction of the State’s monopoly on authority
(Tridimas, 1996, p. 206)
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© 2001 Marlene Wind
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Wind, M. (2001). Governing with Judges?. In: Sovereignty and European Integration. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403901040_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403901040_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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