The Jean Monnet Program

Professor J.H.H.Weiler
European Union Jean Monnet Chair

Jean Monnet Working Paper 7/02

Pablo V. Figueroa Regueiro

Invocability of Substitution and Invocability of Exclusion: Bringing Legal Realism to the Current Developments of the Case-Law of “Horizontal” Direct Effect of Directives

NYU School of Law  New York, NY 10012

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No part of this paper may be reproduced in any form
without permission of the author.

ISSN 1087-2221
© Pablo V. Figueroa Regueiro 2002
New York University School of Law
New York, NY 10012 
USA

						

Invocability of Substitution and Invocability of Exclusion: Bringing Legal Realism to the Current Developments of the Case-Law of “Horizontal” Direct Effect of Directives

by

Pablo V. Figueroa Regueiro
vedrus@hotmail.com

ABSTRACT:
This paper tries to show the principles used, explicitly or not, by the ECJ when recognising certain effects to unimplemented directives between individuals, that is, to show the underlying rationale of the current status of the Law. The present state of the matter can only be understood by reference to the changes throughout 30 years of Case-Law. To explain these developments of the law, a reformulation of the theory of the effects of Community Law will be proposed, a reformulation that states that there is a gradation of the possibilities of invoking a Community norm, so that the effects of Community Law can no longer be explained by the twin concepts of Primacy and Direct Effect. 

“The Boundaries of direct effect therefore continue to appear blurred, the Court of Justice rendering judgements which cannot be explained by any of the propositions mentioned above. (…) what one is left is a line of cases which seem to be allowing for a kind of horizontal direct effect, thus blurring the distinct boundaries of direct effect laid down by the Court itself”. 
M. LENZ, D. SIF TYNES and L. YOUNG.

“People want to know under what circumstances and how far they will run the risk of coming against what is so much stronger than themselves, and hence it becomes a business to find out when this danger is to be feared.  The object of our study, then, is prediction, the prediction of the incidence of the public force through the instrumentality of the courts”.
O.W. HOLMES
INDEX

1.- Introduction	p.5
2.- The Case-Law Until Dori	p.6
3.- The Case-Law  from Dori till today: Giving effect to directives in other ways
A)	The End of the “Estoppel” reasoning. Broadening the Concept of State	p.11
B)	State Liability in Damages for non Implementation of a Directive	p.11
C)	The CIA and Bernáldez Case-Law: Unilever	p.12
D)	The doctrine of “indirect” effect
D.1) The Case-Law until Arcaro	p.15
D.2) Current developments in the Marleasing Case-Law
D.2.1) Bellone and Centrosteel	p.16
D.2.2) Océano Grupo	p.19
E)	The control of the respect of the limits to the discretion conferred to a State 
to transpose a directive: WWF, Linster	p.22
4.- The Gradation of Invocability. Towards a New Formulation of the Theory 
of the Effects of Community Law	p.27
A)	The “Minimal Justiciability”
A.1) The “Invocability of Conform Interpretation”
(the so-called “indirect effect” or “Marleasing” doctrine)	p.28
A.2) The “Invocability of Exclusion”	p.28
A.3) The “Invocability of Reparation"	p.29
B)	The “Reinforced Justiciability” (traditional “direct effect”)	p.29
C)	Beyond legal formalism: exclusion and substitution as 
the two sides of the same coin?	p.30
5.- Conclusions. The Rule of Law, Legal Certainty and Further Developments 
of the Law	p.35
6.- Bibliography
A)	Case-law from the European Court of Justice	p.38
B)	Cases from the national jurisdictions	p.41
C)	Legislative acts of the Communities	p.41
D)	Scientific Literature	p.42

Abbreviations

AERev 	American Economic Review

AG 	Advocate General

CED 	Cuadernos Europeos de Deusto

CGPJ 	Consejo General del Poder Judicial

CMLR 	Common Market Law Reports.

CMLRev 	Common Market Law Review

DJGV	Departamento de Justicia del Gobierno Vasco

ECJ	European Court of Justice

ECR	European Court Reports

ELRev	European Law Review

EPL	European Public Law Review

GJ	Gaceta Jurídica de la Unión Europea y de la Competencia

HLRev	Harvard Law Review

OJ	Official Journal of the European Communities 
(its name will change into “Official Journal of the European Union" after the entry into force of the Treaty of Nice)

RIE	Revista de Instituciones Europeas

RTDeur	Revue trimestrielle de droit européen

SEA	Single European Act

YEL	Yearbook of European Law

1.- Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to show the principles used, whether explicitly or otherwise, by the ECJ when recognizing that unimplemented directives may have certain effects between individuals. This topic as it presently stands can only be understood with reference to the changes throughout 30 years of case-law. Accordingly, brief though precise reference will be made to the dynamics of change, and while some cases are very well known some others may not be. The parallel discussion between academics will be referred to only insofar as it is relevant to explain the Law. This parallel discussion, though not the main focus of this paper, is nevertheless important as it influences some of the views expressed herein. 

As the learned reader will be able to observe, the foregoing analysis of the case-law will show  a clear influence from the Legal Realism school of thought. Interest will then be more focused on trying to ascertain what the future decisions of the Court would be as opposed to justifying, from any point of view, which decisions should be taken by the Court. As a consequence, the difference between "real rules" and "paper rules" will be fully acknowledged throughout the paper and two levels of decision will be clearly identified when analysing the evolution in this area of the law. As a recent study by MADURO POIARES in another field of Community Law has skilfully shown, an approach based on this distinction between motive analysis and legal reasoning allows for a deeper comprehension of the behaviour of the Court. 

	However, motive analysis in a collegial tribunal is not usually easy and hardly ever one-directional, a statement which, in this field, is reinforced by the different and firm positions taken by the AGs. The Court recognised direct effect in general and direct effect to directives in particular in its constitutional search for the “effectiveness” of EC-Law. The erosion of the constitutional guarantees of the division of competences in the 1970s and the end of the Luxembourg-veto power with the SEA brought the “Competence” issue to centre stage. The Court in the 1990s accepted its fate of adjudicating on disputes concerning the division of competences between the Community and the Member States. This, together with the will of the ECJ to ensure cooperation by national Courts, which had shown, in some instances, reluctance to accept “horizontal” direct effect, explains the denial of horizontal direct effect in Dori and El Corte Inglés. The most recent cases (and others less recent, e.g. Marleasing), though formally accepting the prohibition of horizontal direct effect, evidence a tendency to give certain effects to unimplemented directives in horizontal relations. To explain these developments of the law, a reformulation of the theory of the effects of Community Law will be proposed. This reformulation states that there is a gradation of the possibilities of invoking a Community norm, so that the effects of Community Law can no longer be explained by the twin concepts of Primacy and Direct Effect. 

	"Supremacy" will thus be shown to be a much wider principle than simply one of prevalence of Community Law. The new and far reaching consequences of Supremacy will radically change the traditional views on the effect of Community Law in Member States, as the classical division of norms with and without direct effect will no longer be sufficient to explain the law.

2.- The Case-Law Until Dori.
“The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience (...) The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. In order to know what it is, we must know what it has been, and what it tends to become”.
O.W. HOLMES

The classical story of direct effect is very well known, so it will not be treated here in depth. We will instead only address some parts that are relevant for the understanding of the cases the study of which is the object of this paper. 

No provision of the Treaties stated whether the relation between Community norms and national law should be monist or dualist. Following a teleological interpretation and acting more as a constitutional court than as an international tribunal, the Court recognised in its seminal judgement Van Gend en Loos that certain Community legal norms should be regarded as the "law of the land" in the sphere of Community Law, that is, that they give rise to rights and obligations directly, i. e. without the need to be implemented by national law. The step was a bold one, particularly if we consider that the legal order of the communities is based on cooperation between the ECJ and national courts. 

Acceptance by the national judiciary of the new doctrines is a story of mutual empowerment, but also of formalism. Van Gend en Loos appeared to be a plausible interpretation of the Treaty, especially as the transfer of sovereignty that served as the basis of direct effect was said to be “within limited fields”. Formalism is also valid to a certain extent as an explanation for the acceptance by the national executives and legislatives of the constitutional construct of a body of norms with direct effect. This acceptance was not however so surprising as the interest of states lay in the development of such a construct. In the words of J.H.H. WEILER:

“On the whole, in the pre-SEA/Maastricht Period, the Court interfered little in the decisional process of the community, except for a great insistence on respect for institutional arrangements, leaving a relatively free hand to the political organs to strike their bargains. By contrast it intervened through its structural and material jurisprudence rather boldly in the post-decisional phase –creating a legal apparatus which would make these bargains stick. The judicial message was: you are free to bargain but agreements reached (through legislation) must be respected. This analysis would suggest a strong interest on the part of the Member States to uphold the judicial construct, given their obvious interest in making bargains stick.”

The Court stated: “There will be no free rider Member State” when it built the doctrines of Supremacy and Direct Effect, so the States on the whole, agree with the construct. They had a lot to win and little to lose, since by the Luxembourg Agreements they have a veto power on Community decision making. Control of the Community by the States also explains their peaceful reception of the erosion of the enumerated competences principle that characterised the Community from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s.

Meanwhile, the Court also developed its case-law on direct effect recognising horizontal direct effect of Treaty provisions in Defrenne, and recognising direct effect first of certain provisions of directives together with other provisions. Subsequently, it recognized provisions of certain isolated directives in Van Duyn, invoking the "effet utile" of Community Law and the binding effect of directives according to Article 189. 

Not all national courts accepted that Directives could be directly effective. The Conseil d´Etat in Cohn-Bendit refused to follow Van Duyn and to allow the plaintiff to invoke a directive. Looking merely at the words of Article 249 (ex 189) of the Treaty, the French Administrative Court considered that only national authorities were competent to decide the means by which directives could produce effects in domestic law. The German Bundesfinanzhof took the same views on the direct effect of directives, and the German Constitutional Court had to intervene to put its resistance to an end.  The reasoning of those courts in all these examples ran along similar lines. They considered that Article 189 expressly distinguished Regulations from Directives and, as only the former were described as “directly applicable”, the latter seemed to be intended to take effect within the national order only via national implementing measures. The development of the doctrine of direct effect of directives was considered by the national Courts to push the treaty too far. The ECJ realised that the fact that its arguments were perceived by national courts to be an implausible interpretation of the Treaty could undermine the cooperation of national courts, so a new argument was introduced in support of direct effect of directives in Ratti  and Becker, the so-called “estoppel” argument. 

The “estoppel” reasoning leads coherently to a distinction between horizontal and vertical cases, so it should not have been surprising that the Court denied direct effect in horizontal situations in Marshall I. However the case did not look extremely convincing, as the Court did not refer to the “estoppel” argument, and instead, stated that “the binding nature of a directive existed only in relation to each member to which it is addressed”. The Court increased the confusion by starting a process of broadening of the concept of State for the purposes of Direct Effect that continued in later cases, so that the "estoppel" argument can no longer be considered valid today. 

But the departure from the doctrine of “estoppel” and the introduction at Maastricht in article 254 (ex191) of the Treaty of a publication requirement for most directives was not followed, despite huge pressure from the literature and the own AGs of the court , by a reverse of the law on horizontal effect of directives. Thus, in a now classic paragraph of Faccini Dori, the Court held that:

“The effect of extending that case-law [that of direct effect of directives] to the sphere of relations between individuals would be to recognise a power in the Community to enact obligations for individuals with immediate effect, whereas it has competence to do so only where it is empowered to adopt regulations.”

The SEA meant the end of the ethos of veto and turned the aforementioned erosion of the principle of enumerated competences into a menace for Member states. The implications of this phenomenon were far reaching, but for the purposes of this work, we will limit ourselves to remark that the issue of Competences became suddenly very important as there was no more veto for Member States, so the ECJ had to change its loose approach to this issue, as otherwise it would risk breaking the wide consensus on which its position as supreme arbitrator within the Community was based. By acting as the protector of Member State competence against the intrusion of the Community, the Court of Justice preempts any attempt by a national court to do so. It is in this context that we can understand cases like Keck, the very recent Tobacco case and, what is more important for us, Dori. 

In Dori the court did not simply reject horizontal direct effect. More importantly, it was adjudicating on the division of competences between the Community and Member States. 

Despite clear rulings by the Court in Marshall I, Dori, and El Corte Inglés, authors have continued to argue in favour of horizontal effect of directives. The basis of the discussion is whether the recognition of horizontal direct effect blurs the distinction between directives and regulations, and whether this would disrupt the competence distribution provided for in the Treaty, insofar as in certain cases the Community was not given the power to enact norms that have effects between individuals.

The purpose here is not to add another string of printed pages to the discussion. This paper is based on the assumption that the prohibition of horizontal direct effect in Dori is correct, since it is the approach that a Court which takes constitutional limits seriously should take. This accords with the Geist of the times, which require clear acts on the part of the ECJ to restore some vigour to the long forgotten principle of enumerated competences. The time has come when Brussels (as a bureaucratic structure or as a political idea) is no longer popular among populations and governments of Member states, and the ECJ is no longer peacefully accepted as the sole arbitrator of disputes of competence between the community and the member states. If someone wants to argue otherwise, Dori should be refuted. The present writer will not pretend it cannot be done, but only that in his views, attempts to do so have not been very convincing so far.

Member states' concern with respect to the competence issue was clearly stated in the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) in Nice. This IGC concluded its work on 11 December 2000 (the Treaty being signed on 26 February 2001) with an agreement on the institutional issues that had not been settled at Amsterdam and which had to be resolved before enlargement, as well as on a series of other points not directly connected with enlargement. A Declaration concerning the future of the Union was adopted, whereby member states called for a deeper and wider debate about the future of the European Union. Accordingly, during 2001 the Swedish and Belgian Presidencies, in co-operation with the Commission, encouraged wide-ranging discussions with all interested parties, including the candidate countries associated in the process. Though the September 11 attacks against the US made member states focus much of their attention in the development of a strong police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters to combat terrorism, the subsequent Laeken Declaration of 15 December 2001 reaffirmed the political will to reach agreements on a better division and definition of competence in the European Union. For that purpose, the Laeken IGC convened a Convention on the future of the European Union, active from 1 March 2001, with the task of considering the key issues arising for the Union's future development and identifying the various possible responses.

3.- The Case-Law  from Dori until today: Giving effect to directives in other ways		

A)	The End of the “Estoppel” Reasoning - Broadening the Concept of State

The broadening of the concept of State is frequently included by authors among those post-Dori developments of the law where the ECJ circumvented its own prohibition of horizontal direct effect for directives, and indeed in some way this broadening diminishes the importance of this prohibition. These developments are well-known, have been covered and therefore will not be covered any further. 

B)	State Liability in Damages for non-Implementation of a Directive

In its Francovich ruling, the Court of Justice introduced a further and increasingly important means by which an individual can enforce a directive when, as in Dori, a barrier to horizontal direct effect is encountered. It declared that a State could be liable to an individual in damages for loss caused by its failure to implement a directive. The consequence is not horizontal direct effect per se but nevertheless amounts to some "effect" recognised in being a unimplemented directive. 

 It is outside the scope of this paper to go into details into the law of State Liability for breaches of Community Law, but it should be remembered that, according to the Court it is possible to bring a damages claim where an individual cannot rely on the provisions of an unimplemented directive on the ground:

a)	That they required additional implementing measures and hence could not have direct effect. Or, what is more important for our purposes:
b)	That the provisions –although satisfying the substantive requirements for direct effect –were invoked as against another individual. Or
c)	That  the national law could not be interpreted in conformity with the directive.

C)	The CIA and Bernáldez Case-Law. Unilever

Cases like CIA and Bernáldez have been referred to on a repeated number of occasions by the literature. They are usually but not always grouped together in terms of direct effect, where the presence of an element of public law allegedly turns what at first sight seemed to be a horizontal relationship into a vertical relationship. CIA is basic for the purposes of understanding the new cases, but very well known, so its facts will not be repeated here. In any case it is more remarkable that the Court did clarify whether the situation was a horizontal or vertical one, which is even more surprising considering that AG ELMER had explicitly raised the issue.

While CIA could be reconciled with Dori because of public law elements (i.e. the proceedings related to unfair trading) that rendered the relationship vertical for the purposes of direct effect, in the recent Unilever the importance of the public element is, at best, ancillary, so that the classic doctrine of direct effect is clearly insufficient to explain it.

Unilever had supplied Central Food with olive oil. The latter had informed the former that the oil supplied had not been labelled in accordance with Italian law and, consequently, refused to pay the amount due and called on Unilever to remove the goods from its warehouse. Unilever contested Central Food’s position. Under the procedure for notification and examination of draft technical regulations established by Directive 83/189/ EEC, the Commission had ordered the Italian Republic not to legislate in relation to the labelling of oil until 5 may 1999. Referring to the CIA judgement, Unilever therefore contended that the contested Law should not be applied, as the Italian Law had been enacted on the 3 August 1998 and commenced proceedings before the Pretore di Milano for an order requiring Central Food to pay a sum corresponding to the price of the consignment. The Pretore di Milano decided to refer the case to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling requesting the Court's view on whether, in the circumstances of the case, it should disapply the Italian law in question.

The Italian and the Danish Governments, which had submitted written observations, contended that the Community only had the power to impose obligations with immediate effect between individuals where it was empowered to enact regulations. In their view, CIA should not be regarded as a reverse to the principle according to which a directive cannot have direct effect in horizontal relations between individuals.

Nevertheless the Court repeated its arguments set out in CIA and held:

 “[…], it follows from the Case-Law of the Court that the inapplicability of a technical regulation which has not been notified in accordance with article 8 of the Directive 83/189 can be invoked in proceedings between individuals (…) and there is no reason, in that connection, to treat disputes between individuals relating to unfair competition, as in the CIA Security case, differently from disputes between individuals concerning contractual rights and obligations, as in the main proceedings. (…) In such circumstances, and unlike the case of non-transposition of directives with which the case-law cited by those governments is concerned [ Faccini Dori], Directive 83/189 does not in any way define the substantive scope of the legal rule on the basis of which the national court must decide the case before it. It creates neither rights nor obligations for individuals.”

The last sentences show the development of a new doctrine of the effect of unimplemented directives in national legal systems. This statement (and the whole case in general) cannot be explained according to the old theories of direct effect or of consistent interpretation. The Court has something different in mind: the Invocability of exclusion that it had used in other contexts which we will deal with later.

Two cases are frequently mentioned alongside CIA as they all seem to undermine the prohibition of horizontal direct effect in Dori and El Corte Inglés: Panagis Pafitis  and Bernáldez. They are, as mentioned above, usually reconciled with Dori by considering them vertical due to the presence of a Public Law element. 

This is plausible (but, still arguable) in Pafitis, but the Titanic of the old doctrines sunk with Bernáldez. In this case, it is to be remembered, a Sevilla court referred five questions to the ECJ asking for the interpretation of three directives on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to motor insurance. The questions were raised in criminal proceedings against Rafael Ruiz Bernáldez, who had caused an accident while driving while intoxicated. Under Spanish Law, the insurance company was excluded from the cover of damage if the driver was intoxicated. The Court held:

 “Article 3(1)  of Council Directive 72/166/EEC (…) is to be interpreted as meaning that  (…) a compulsory insurance contract may not provide that is certain cases, in particular where the driver of the vehicle was intoxicated, the insurer is not obliged to pay compensation for the damage to property and personal injuries caused to third parties by the insured vehicle (…).” 

The ruling defies any attempt of interpretation according to the classic parameters of direct effect and consistent interpretation. No reference is made to CIA, Dori, or Marleasing. The Public law element (maybe that the insurance was compulsory) was too weak to enable the Court to refer to CIA, or at least to the classic reading of CIA that held it to be a vertical direct effect case. National law was clearly incompatible with Community Law, so Marleasing could not be used without a contra legem interpretation (see below).  

Another reading is that the Court may simply have given the correct interpretation of the Community norm, without ruling on its effects in national law. This last understanding of Bernáldez is consistent with earlier case-law and it is a plausible literal reading of the judgment. However it would make no practical sense. It would be like the ruling of a court saying “according to this penal code, X has committed murder, but this Tribunal does not find it necessary to rule on whether this penal code is to be applied”. The Court was never asked to explain what the exact effect of its ruling was. However we will see that in a later but similar case, a national court highlighted all the inconsistencies of this kind of judgements. It stressed that the attempt by the Court to solve these inconsistencies, still based on the classical doctrines, only led to more confusion.

D)	The doctrine of “indirect” effect

D.1) The Case-Law until Arcaro

Another way in which the Court of Justice appeared to encourage the application and effectiveness of directives, despite refusing to allow their direct horizontal effect enforcement, was by developing a principle requiring national law to be interpreted in “the light of the wording and purpose” of Community Law, including unimplemented directives. Marleasing stated firstly that an unimplemented directive could be relied on to influence the interpretation of national law in a case between individuals (as the obligation to interpret national law in conformity with the directive holds irrespective of whether their provisions have direct effect), and secondly that this was so even where the national law had been adopted before the directive. 

In Wagner Miret, the Court accepted that the Spanish legislation in question could not be interpreted in such a way as to give effect to the result sought by the applicants, which is frequently quoted as the most important limit to the Marleasing case-law. The national court is thus not obliged to make a contra legem interpretation. In a recent decision Evobus Austria, the Court of Justice confirmed that provisions of domestic law may be incapable of being interpreted in conformity with a directive. The Court of Justice emphasised that if national law cannot be interpreted consistently with the directive, then the plaintiff has the alternative remedy of an action for damages against the State.

However the boundaries of the Principle of Consistent Interpretation became rather obscure after Arcaro. As the case is also famous, only its most striking paragraph will be reproduced here, a paragraph that has been quoted in much literature in the field for the most amazing variety of purposes:

 “that obligation of the national court to refer to the content of the directive when interpreting the relevant rules of its own national law reaches a limit where such an interpretation leads to the imposition on an individual of an obligation laid down by a directive which has not been transposed [which is exactly what Marleasing does] or, more especially, where it has the effect of determining or aggravating, on the basis of the directive and in the absence of a law enacted for its implementation, the liability in criminal law of persons who act in contravention of that directive’s provisions (…)”.

 If literally interpreted, this is contra-Marleasing. Different and subtle theories have been sought to explain the relation between the two judgements. However Arcaro should not be read as a reverse of the Marleasing case-law, particularly because it is a judgement by a three-judge chamber. In the present writer's opinion, Arcaro should not be limited to its criminal law context.

D.2) Current developments in the Marleasing Case-Law

D2.1) Cases Bellone vs. Yokohama  and Centrosteel vs. Adipol

Bellone concerned the interpretation of a directive relating to self-employed commercial agents. Mrs. Bellone acted as a commercial agent on behalf of Yokohama pursuant to an agency contract entered into between the parties. After Yokohama terminated that contract, Mrs Bellone claimed payment of various indemnities. The Pretore of Bologna rejected Mrs Bellone´s claims on the ground that the agency contract was void because it had not been entered on the register of commercial agents and representatives at the time when the contract was concluded. Registration is compulsory pursuant to Italian law. On appeal, the Tribunale, Bologna, considered that a question of Community Law arose insofar as the national rules in issue in the main proceedings, which make the right of agents conditional upon entry in the appropriate register, could be incompatible with the directive, which makes no provision for such a register. 

 The ruling in Bellone is similar and as ambiguous as regards its exact effect in national law as was Bernáldez. In any event, it must be noted that the Court did not mention CIA,  Marleasing,  Van Duyn, Dori, nor any of the Principles usually associated to these cases. The Court held instead:

“Council Directive 86/653 of 18 December 1986 on the co-ordination of the laws of the Member States relating to self-employed commercial agents precludes a national rule which makes the validity of an agency contract conditional upon the commercial agent being entered in the appropriate register”.

	If ever the traditional view of direct effect (or, rather the traditional vision of this area of law based on the division of provisions with and without direct effect) was problematic, it is never more than here (with the exception, perhaps, of Unilever). How is Bellone to be interpreted? How is Bernáldez to be interpreted? Direct Effect? The word “precludes” used in Bellone may remind us of CIA, and Bernáldez is usually studied alongside CIA. Therefore these two cases may be CIA-like cases. Of course, the problem would be how to explain CIA. It has to be remembered that the reference in CIA was framed very much as a traditional direct effect question, the national Court trying to ascertain whether the Community provision in question was sufficiently precise and unconditional to be relied upon by an individual before the national court. However if we are going to read CIA as a direct effect case, it should be reconciled somehow with Dori.

The outcomes are frequently explained by reference to the existence of a public law element, so that finally they are considered to be vertical and not horizontal, thus avoiding the prohibition of Dori. CIA brought an action under Belgian Public Law seeking to uphold a public law obligation, namely the obligation not to engage in unfair trading practices, breach of which would potentially lead to criminal liability. The Public Element is said to be similar in Bernáldez, either from the fact that the proceedings were brought by the public prosecutor, or by virtue of the compulsory nature of the insurance contract in question. Appealing as it might result at first sight, the inconsistencies of this solution have been pointed out by M. LENZ, D. SIF TYNES and L. YOUNG:

“Firstly, the delimitation of public law may vary from one Member State to the other. Secondly, it should be noted that in any event the public/private law is not easily drawn (…)  Indeed [if all this cases are considered to be public law cases] then it is hard to imagine what would fall outwith this domain. [argument that I find specially true for Bellone]. Moreover, if one were to accept the “public law element” theory as an exception to the firmly established denial of horizontal direct effect, such a wide approach thereto would call into question the principle of restrictive interpretation of exceptions”.
	
Strictly speaking, it seems that the Court simply gives the correct interpretation of the directive without referring to its effects in national law.  Should it be so, then the national Court would not be given any strict guidance on how to apply (or, rather whether to apply) Community Law for which it had just received the correct interpretation from the ECJ. If our point of departure is a conceptual set of propositions where a provision is to be classified as having or not having direct effect and the concrete relationship at stake is clearly horizontal (as indeed I think it is in the case in Bellone, but it is not the purpose of this paper to argue about what is or what is not a Public Law relationship), then maybe the answer would be that the provision is not directly effective. It might be the case that whereas National law would be contrary to the directive thus interpreted by the ECJ, it would still be the law applicable to the relationship, as Community Law might not be directly effective. This is precisely what another Italian national Court took for granted when it asked for a reference in Centrosteel Vs. Adipol GmbH:

“The national court, taking Bellone into account, takes the view that, since under the settled case-law of the Court of Justice directives do not have direct effect in relations between individuals, Bellone cannot result in [Italian Law] being dissaplied in the proceedings before it. According to the national court, it may therefore be necessary to refer directly to the provisions of the Treaty, in particular those provisions relating to freedom of Stablishment and freedom to provide services, which, unlike directives, are directly”.

The ECJ had thus to abandon its comfortable position of Bellone and Bernáldez and to state clearly the effects that Community Law would have in national law. It did so following the traditional view of an all embracing division between directly effective and non directly effective provisions. It thus found itself caught by its formal prohibition of direct effect, so it had to use Marleasing. What initially was a Bernáldez solution in Bellone had to be explained in terms of Marleasing by its sequel  Centrosteel:

“14. It should also be noted that in Bellone the Court ruled on a situation identical (...) that the directive precluded the validity of the agency contract from being conditional on the commercial agent’s entry in such a register.

15. It is true that, according to settled case-law of the Court, in the absence of proper transposition into national law, a directive cannot of itself impose obligations on individuals [The Court quoted here Marshall I and Dori].

16. However, it is also apparent from the Case-law of the Court [The Court quoted here Marleasing, Wagner Miret, Dori and Océano Grupo] that, when applying national law whether adopted before or after the directive, the national court that has to interpret that Law must do so, as far as possible, in the light of the wording and the purpose of the directive so as to achieve the result it has in view and thereby comply with the third paragraph of Article 189 [now 249] of the EC Treaty”.

	It has to be noticed that in paragraph 6 of Bellone and also in paragraph 6 of Centrosteel the Court had stated that Italian case-law clearly treated an agency contract entered into by a person who is not registered as void on the grounds of infringement of the mandatory provisions laid down in article 9 of Law no 204. So apparently the Court in the above mentioned paragraph 16 of Centrosteel suggests a use of Marleasing which, arguably, would amount to a contra legem interpretation of national law. 

 Changing slightly the subject of our discourse, it also has to be noticed that in this same case AG JACOBS made clear (correctly it seems) the limits of Arcaro in the sense that has been indicated above:

“34. [it] might appear to impose drastic limitations on the principle of interpretation of national law in accordance with Community directives. I do not consider, however, that the statement should be read in that way. It was made in the context of criminal proceedings, and the Kolpinghuis case cited by the Court also concerns criminal liability. In so far as the wording might appear to apply outside the criminal context, it is difficult to reconcile both with the Court´s prior and subsequent case-law.” 

Summarising,  Bellone and Centrosteel are important for our purposes for two reasons: 
a) Clarification and limitation of the significance of Arcaro.
b) Problems that arise when the Court tries to apply to the recent cases the classic view of Direct Effect. The Court not only proposed a contra legem use of Marleasing in Centrosteel but also made a somewhat surprising evolution from Bellone to Centrosteel. Although the Court did not allude to any revolutionary thinking in its judgment, the Court first answered in a Bernáldez way (Bellone) and then in a Marleasing way (Centrosteel). Let us not underestimate this evolution. Bernáldez and Bellone tend towards the inapplicability of national law. On the contrary, Marleasing is about the interpretation (and thus the application) of national law. The difference between the two is particularly relevant insofar as Marleasing cannot require a contra legem interpretation, whereas Bernáldez or Bellone, at least as we understand them, require the disaplication of national law that is contrary to the directive. Bernáldez is indeed linked with Marleasing, insofar as they both stem from the overarching principle of Supremacy, but its closest link is with CIA which also concerns disapplication of national law.

 The blurring of the limits between Bernáldez and Marleasing, in the present writer's view, is a sign of the logical continuity between the two. As Bernáldez is to some extent similar to CIA, it flows that Marleasing and CIA are not as separate as was once traditionally thought. The sharp conceptual divisions usually made by authors in this field prove to be elusive when we try to apply them to the case-law. 

We will see below that, though the Court does not refer to it, the principle of Supremacy is behind all these cases. It is this principle which binds them together, and is the reason why the line between Marleasing and Bernáldez is not as clear as was once thought. It is not because in the end they are both Supremacy cases. The Court encounters difficulties in clarifying its principles in this area, but as will be seen below the ultimate criterion is that Supremacy should not be hindered. The effects of Community Law provisions in the national legal systems may no longer be explained by the summa divisio of provisions with and without direct effect. A more nuanced classification is to be distinguished, recognising a gradation of situations depending on the implications that the Supremacy of Community norms may have in each situation, depending on the "justiciability" of the provision in question.  Using Supremacy as the ultimate criterion we can draw a clear and sharp line that explains all the cases without contradictions such as the evolution from Bellone to Centrosteel and without having to use Marleasing to reverse a clear interpretation of national law. But this, as we have just said, will be exposed in more depth in the last part of this paper.
		
D.2.2) Case Océano Grupo

	These joined cases concern the possibility for a national court to raise a point of Community Law on its own motion. The topic is of huge importance and it is indeed related with the subject of these pages as it can also be considered another consequence of the Principle of Supremacy. But this paper will deal with Supremacy only in relation to direct effect of directives, so this area of the law will not be examined in depth either.

The Case is interesting because it states a constitutionally crucial application of the doctrine of consistent interpretation:

 “The requirement for an interpretation in conformity with the directive with the directive requires the national court, in particular, to favour the interpretation that would allow it to decline of its own motion the jurisdiction conferred on by virtue of an unfair term”.

	We repeat, “a constitutionally crucial application” of the Marleasing Principle, so crucial, that one indeed doubts whether it is sustainable. We will see a different and enlightening solution of the case, that of AG SAGGIO, which points to the new conception of the effects of Community Law that it is constantly submitted in this paper as the way to explain all these apparently incoherent cases.

	But let us recall the judgement first. Between 1995 and 1996 each of the defendants in the main proceedings entered into a contract for the purchase by instalments of an encyclopædia. The contracts contained a term conferring jurisdiction on the courts in Barcelona, city in which none of the purchasers was domiciled, but where the sellers had their principal place of business. The purchasers of the encyclopædia did not pay the sums due in the agreed dates, and the sellers brought actions in the aforementioned Barcelona court to recover their money. 

	Article 3 of the Directive on unfair terms in consumer contracts defines what constitutes an unfair contractual term and gives an indicative and non exhaustive list of the terms which may be regarded as unfair, one of which is “excluding or hindering the consumer right’s to take legal action or exercise or any other legal remedy”. The directive also establishes the following two obligations on the member states: a) To lay down that unfair terms used in a contract concluded with a consumer by a seller or supplier shall not be binding on the consumer (art. 6). b) To ensure that adequate and effective means exist to prevent the continued use of unfair terms in contracts concluded with consumers by sellers or suppliers.

The Directive should have been transposed into national law no later than 31 December 1994 but by the date of the proceedings there had not been any Spanish national law enacted for this purpose. Consumers therefore had to rely on the Law 26/1984 of 19 july 1984, General for the Protection of Consumers and Users which, although defining unfair terms and declaring them void, did not specifically declare as unfair any clause restricting Jurisdiction. Because decisions of Spanish national courts were inconsistent, the Court of Barcelona was unsure as to whether under Spanish Law, a court may, in proceedings concerning consumer protection, determine of its own motion whether an unfair term is void.

	The ECJ first stated that the term at issue in the main proceedings satisfied the criteria to be considered unfair, as it obliged the consumer to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of a court which might be a long way from his domicile. It then analysed the system of protection introduced by the directive, and found that it was based in the idea that the consumer is in a weak position vis-à-vis the seller or supplier, and that this unbalance could only be corrected by positive action by the court. So the court’s power to determine of its own motion whether a term is unfair should be regarded as constituting a proper means of preventing an individual consumer from being bound by an unfair term, and it could “act as a deterrent and contribute to preventing unfair terms in contracts concluded between consumers and sellers or suppliers”.
	
	The Court referred to the principle of consistent interpretation and therefore held that: 

	“The requirement for an interpretation in conformity with the directive requires the national court, (…) to favour the interpretation that would allow it to decline of its own motion the jurisdiction conferred on it by virtue of an unfair term”.

 AG SAGGIO felt that there was a clear and obvious contrast between the internal procedural provisions and the directive. While the internal law recognised the validity of a jurisdiction clause such as the one at issue, the Community directive stated that the clause would not be binding on the consumer, being as it was “abusive”. He considered that “obviously there does not seem[ed] to exist any internal law disposition that c[ould] be ´interpreted´ in a way that the objective pursued by the directive is achieved”. The solution that was finally reached by the Court would (correctly in the present writer's view) have been considered contra legem and unacceptable by AG SAGGIO.

SAGGIO noticed that Marleasing could thus not be used in this case, as he noticed that the proceedings were between individuals. Of course, he could have simply said that Community Law had nothing to say about the case but to provide reparation of damages against the State and that the internal law should produce its effect, but the solution would have been perceived not only as unfair but also as hindering the principle of Supremacy of Community Law. One could even doubt the legal nature of a directive which although obliging a Member State to adopt its national law by 1994, has no effect in a 1997 dispute. This is the case, even though the 1997 dispute is based on facts from 1995/96 and is only relevant as a basis for a claim in damages against the State. For example, in Spain that would entail long delays while the judgement is pending in view of the overloaded judicial system that has to deal with a large number of cases brought against the State, as a claim is subject to all the requirements of the law of damages, including evidence of a causal link. Having the State as defendant can also be viewed as far more difficult than a seller of encyclopædia.

So some kind of effect had to be conferred to the directive, and the classical view of direct effect had to be abandoned. And so did SAGGIO. He gathered this case together with  CIA, Bernáldez and Bellone, to explain them all by a new doctrine, inspired in a similar analysis made by D. SIMON, that held as follows: 

“l´obligation d´écarter les règles nationales contraires au droit communautaire s´impose au juge national en vertu du principe de primauté, y compris, si la norme en cause est déporvoue d´effet direct. Si le juge national (…) ne peut se sustituer à l´autorité de transposition, rien ne lui interdit en revanche d´écarter l´application d´une règle nationale incompatible avec une norme qui lui est hiérarchiquement supérieure en vertu du principe de primauté. (…). Certes, l´analyse proposée suppose un découplage entre effet directe et primauté, mais cette dissociation paraît précisément constituer l´un des axes dominants de l´évolution récente de la jurisprudence de la Cour de justice comme des jurisdictions nationales”.

This attempt to stress the difference between the principle of conform interpretation and the possibility of simply disapplying national provisions found to be contrary to a directive was also transpired from AG JACOBS' opinion in Axa Royale. In this case, the reference for a preliminary ruling was made in the course of proceedings between Axa Royale Belge SA and Mr Ochoa, an insurance broker, and Stratégie Finance SPRL concerning the failure to include certain information required by national law in life-assurance proposals or policies. Mr. Ochoa deleted from life assurance proposals the warning required by a Belgian decree, whereby clients were to be advised that cancellation, reduction or surrender of an existing life-assurance contract for the purposes of subscribing to another life-assurance contract is generally detrimental to the policy-holder. Axa alleged that failure on the part of Stratégie to include this warning in its proposals encouraged its clients to replace their existing life-assurance policies with new ones to the benefit of Stratégie. 

The said Belgian decree was intended to implement a directive on life assurance and, more specifically, to extend the protection afforded by it to policy-holders. As well intentioned as the implementing measure seemed to be, the national court was however concerned with the compatibility with the directive of the obligation imposed  by the decree and referred the case to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling on the applicability of the national provision at issue. 

The relationship referred by the national court being a horizontal one, the importance of this case lies in the fact that the legal analysis of the situation was directly and primarily focused by the AG on the compatibility of the implementing measure with the directive. JACOBS did not expressly analyse whether the situation could be solved via a conform interpretation of the conflicting national provision. And, it is submitted, he did not do so because it seemed plain to him that in light of the wording of the directive, that interpretation was not possible:

“That provision [of the Directive] plainly suggests that only specific information directly relevant to the particular commitment may be required. A general warning [like the one foreseen in the conflicting national provision] (...) cannot in my view constitute such information (...) It is clear that, by regulating the information to be provided to policy-holders, the Directive not only strikes what the Community legislature regarded as the correct balance between consumer protection on the one hand and opening up the market in life assurance products on the other but also does so in terms which exclude a requirement such as that imposed by Article 4(2)(b) of the Royal Decree”.

Bearing this in mind, the legal reasoning of the Court turns out to be somewhat unexpected. Even though the AG had clearly stated that the national provisions at issue could not be reconciled with the directive by means of interpretation (in the sense that to do so would have amounted to a contra legem interpretation), the Court maintained a firm stance as it had done in previous cases such as Centrosteel and reiterated its case-law on consistent interpretation, mistakenly providing a contra legem interpretation: 

“18. It should be recalled, as a preliminary point that even if, in the absence of proper transposition into national law, a directive cannot of itself impose obligations on individuals, the national court that has to interpret that law must do so, as far as possible, in the light of the wording and the purpose of the directive so as to achieve the result it has in view and thereby comply with the third paragraph of Article 189 of the EC Treaty (now the third paragraph of Article 249 EC) [The Court quoted here Centrosteel]. 
19. It is in the light of that observation that the question referred for a preliminary ruling should be answered.
31. In those circumstances the reply to the question referred must be that Article 31(3) of the directive precludes national legislation which provides that a life-assurance proposal, or in the absence of a proposal, a life-assurance policy must inform the policy-holder (...).”

As we will see below, all these inconsistencies could have been avoided had the Court made use of the theories sustained -expressly or implicitly- by the AGs. 

E)	The control of the respect of the limits to the discretion conferred to a State to transpose a directive

It has to be noted that the doctrine of the inapplicability, also called the doctrine of the “invocability of exclusion” of national norms contrary to a directive is alien to the old case-law, although its interaction with the doctrine of direct effect had been rarely noted.
 
It is settled law that the national court must consider “whether the competent national authorities, in exercising the choice which is left to them as to the form and the methods of implementing the directive, have kept within the limits as to the discretion set out in the directive”.  If national law confers on courts and tribunals discretion to apply mandatory rules of law of their own motion, they must examine ex proprio motu whether the national authorities remained within the limits of their discretion under the directive.

However, the review to be conducted of national law in the light of the directive extends further than measures taken to implement it; it covers all rules governing the application of the directive in the national legal system, including rules that applied before the directive was adopted.  Why then, if this is settled and clear case-law, has it never been used to explain cases such as CIA and Bernáldez? Probably because the relationship between them was usually unnoticed, although not always, as this paragraph from LENAERTS shows:

“The Court of Justice is not prepared, however, to accept a situation in which the  disaplication of national provisions would lead to the imposition on an individual of an obligation laid down by a directive which has not been transposed. Accordingly, the Court has held that Community law does not allow a national court to eliminate national provisions contrary to a provision of a directive which has not been transposed where that provision may not be relied upon before the national court.”

Judge LENAERTS quotes Arcaro as authority but in the writer's view, and as already mentioned above, Arcaro is only good law in its criminal law context. One simply cannot see why the reasoning used by the Court in the most recent cases WWF and Linster would be any different if the situation had arisen between individuals.

WWF was preliminary reference from the Administrative Court, Autonomous Division for the Province of Bolzano. It concerned the interpretation of a directive on environmental assessment. The main proceedings had started when the applicants, who were persons claiming to live near Bolzano-St Jacob Airport and two environmental associations, challenged before the national court the legality of the contested measures, which approved a project for the restructuring of that airport, on the ground that the procedure followed for approving the project was not in conformity with the requirements of the directive. According to them, since the project was likely to have significant effects on the environment, it fell within the scope of the directive and should have been made subject to the assessment procedure provided for in the aforementioned Community norm and not to a mere 'environmental impact study' under national law, which did not meet the directive requirements. 
The national court decided to stay proceedings and to submit several questions for a preliminary ruling, including whether, had the directive been incorrectly transposed, it was vertically directly effective in the sense that the authorities of the Member State were required to subject the projects at issue to an environmental assessment. 
 The Court, following AG MISCHO, held that the directive was to be interpreted as not conferring on a Member State the power either to exclude, from the outset and in their entirety, from the environmental impact assessment procedure established by the directive certain classes of projects, either under national legislation or on the basis of an individual examination of that project, unless those classes of projects in their entirety or the specific project could be regarded, on the basis of a comprehensive assessment, as not being likely to have significant effects on the environment.  
 However, having been explicitly asked by the national court about the direct effect of the directive, the Court’s answer was phrased in different terms. It referred to the control over the limits of the discretion left to the Member State by the directive, so as to dissapply all national provisions where the national authorities had gone beyond the limits of that discrection:

“(…) the national court is essentially asking whether Articles 4(2) and 2(1) of the Directive are to be interpreted as meaning that, where the discretion conferred by those provisions has been exceeded by the legislative or administrative authorities of a Member State, individuals may rely on those provisions before a court of that Member State against the national authorities and thus obtain from the latter the setting aside of the national rules or measures incompatible with those provisions. (…) 
As regards the right of individuals to rely on a directive and of the national court to take it into consideration, the Court has already held that it would be incompatible with the binding effect conferred on directives by Article 189 of the EC Treaty (now Article 249 EC) for the possibility for those concerned to rely on the obligation which directives impose to be excluded in principle. Particularly where the Community authorities have, by directive, imposed on Member States the obligation to pursue a particular course of conduct, the effectiveness of such an act would be diminished if individuals were prevented from relying on it in legal proceedings and if national courts were prevented from taking it into consideration as a matter of Community law in determining whether the national legislature, in exercising its choice as to the form and methods for implementing the directive, had kept within the limits of its discretion set out in the directive [The Court quoted here Cases Verbond van Nederlands Ondernemingen and Kraaijeveld].”

Consequently, the ECJ held that where that discretion had been exceeded and as a result the national provisions should be set aside, it was for the authorities of the Member State, according to their relevant powers, to take all the general or particular measures necessary to ensure that projects were examined in order to determine whether they were likely to have significant effects on the environment and, if so, to ensure that they were subject to an impact assessment.

The fact that the relationship was vertical in WWF does not undermine the possibility, in the present writer's view, of using this reasoning to explain all the aforementioned and ever conflicting cases, from CIA to Bellone. It is respectfully submitted that such an obscure judgement as Arcaro does not provide good reasons for setting aside this possibility which, as we will see, deals with all the theoretical and practical problems of the cases examined in this paper.

Similar conclusions can be drawn from Linster where, for the purpose of constructing the motorway link with Saarland, the State of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg had commenced proceedings for the expropriation of plots of land. The owners concerned challenged the expropriation on the ground that the laws regulating the expropriation in question had been adopted in breach of a directive on environmental assessment, in that the project had not been preceded by an environmental impact study or a public inquiry as was required by the directive. 
The Luxembourg court adjudicating the issue was uncertain whether it could verify compliance with the directive. This uncertainty was irrespective of whether the directive, which had not been transposed within the prescribed period, had direct effect or whether such verification involved appraisal of the direct effect of the directive. It referred to Nakajima v Council, in which the Court had reviewed the legality of the basic Community anti-dumping regulation in the light of the GATT Anti-Dumping Code and had distinguished the question of direct effect from that of collateral review of legality. 
The national court thus referred to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling asking, whether articles 234 and 249 of the EC Treaty should be interpreted as meaning that a court called on to verify the legality of a procedure for the expropriation of immovable property might find that the environmental impact assessment required by the Community directive had not been carried out. Alternatively, the national court asked whether such a finding involved an appraisal of the direct effect of the directive, entailing that the court was required to refer a question on the matter to the Court of Justice of the European Communities.

The ECJ followed the structure of reasoning that it had followed in WWF and did not answer the question that it was being asked. Instead it answered the question whether the provisions of the directive could be taken into account by national courts in order to review whether the national legislature had kept within the limits of the discretion set by it:

“(…) it would be incompatible with the binding effect conferred on directives by that provision to exclude, as a matter of principle, any possibility for those concerned to rely on the obligation which directives impose. Particularly where the Community authorities have, by directive, imposed on Member States the obligation to pursue a particular course of conduct, the effectiveness of such an act would be diminished if individuals were prevented from relying on it in legal proceedings and if national courts were prevented from taking it into consideration as a matter of Community law in determining whether the national legislature, in exercising its choice as to the form and methods for implementing the directive, had kept within the limits of its discretion set by the directive [The Court then quoted Cases Verbond van Nederlandse Ondernemingen, Kraaijeveld and WWF.”

The ruling is almost literally the same as in WWF, other than that the question that had been asked by the national court referred explicitly to the relationship between the doctrine on the control of the discretion conferred on Member States by a directive and the doctrine of Direct Effect. The Court just answered to the applicability of the first, and said nothing about the second. What we have said about WWF applies here: one does not see the reason to limit the application of this doctrine to vertical relationships.

In fact, a recent case may be interpreted as an application of this legal reasoning to horizontal relationships. Although the Court did not expressly mention it, it may be concluded that by its decision in Heininger, it ruled on the inapplication of national implementing legislation as against individuals due to it having been adopted in breach of the margin of discretion afforded to member states by a directive. 

The facts of the case recall Dori, as the plaintiffs in the main proceedings were also consumers  claiming a right to cancel a contract on the basis of a directive, but it is substantially different from Dori in that here the directive had already been transposed (even if incorrectly). The main concern of the referring Court was to ascertain whether the contract at issue fell within the scope of protection of the relevant Community provision. However, the most important finding of the Court for our purposes is the one dealing with the discretion of States when implementing directives and its effect in the situations governed by such transposing measures. More concretely, the States party to the proceedings had argued that the directive at stake granted them a wide margin of discretion as to the means to fulfil the specific objective of the protection of consumers. However, pursuant to an interpretation of the purpose of the directive, the Court concluded that the member states did not enjoy such a broad margin of discretion and that this had been exceeded by enacting the conflicting provisions:

“The bank and the German, Italian and Austrian Governments claim that, since Article 4 of the doorstep-selling directive requires the Member States to ensure that their national law lays down appropriate consumer protection measures in cases where the consumer has not been informed of his right of cancellation, the national legislature is at liberty to limit to one year the period within which the right of cancellation provided for in Article 5 of that directive may be exercised (...). Having regard to the wording and purpose of Article 5 of the doorstep-selling directive, it is not possible to construe the third paragraph of Article 4 as enabling the national legislature to provide that the consumer's right of cancellation must in any event be exercised within a period of one year, even if the trader has not notified the consumer of the existence of that right.”

As had been the case in WWF and more clearly in Linster, the final consequence of the ruling amounted to setting aside the national legislation contrary to the limits established in the directive. It must be acknowledged that the Court was fully conscious of the implications of this decision for the individual parties. Indeed, as AG LÉGER pointed out in his opinion, the cornerstone of this conclusion was the need to ensure the effectiveness of the rights granted to individuals by the Community provisions: 

“En effet, nous tenons à insister sur le point suivant. Si le consommateur n'est pas informé de l'existence d'un droit de révocation, il se trouve dans l'impossibilité de l'exercer. L'effectivité de ce droit repose donc entièrement sur le comportement du commerçant. La directive démarchage à domicile fait peser sur ses épaules une responsabilité particulière, car le droit du consommateur dépend de son attitude. Une défaillance du commerçant peut empêcher la mise en application de ladite directive. ”

From an all-embracing perspective, it is of the utmost interest that AG LÉGER in Linster adopted the same approach in finding the common rationale behind all the aforementioned cases. As his opinion will be explained in detail in the next part of this paper, it will not be discussed here in depth. It suffices to say now that the principle of Supremacy plays  a crucial role.

4.- The Gradation of Invocability. Towards a New Formulation of the Theory of the Effects of Community Law

The classical analysis of the effects of Community Law in the legal orders of the Member States, as it has been conducted in both the case-law and in the scientific literature, has been based in the summa divisio opposing the norms with direct effect to those norms without it. The dominant doctrine, reasoned from the classic formulations of the Court of Justice, had a tendency to overstate the role played by Direct Effect as the exclusive foundation of the competences attributed to the national judge in the application of Community Law in general and of directives in particular. This might have been true for the earliest cases, but the most recent developments of the law confirm the words of R. KOVAR:

 “A une division dichotomique opposant l´effet direct à la absence d´effet  qui donne une vision abusivement simplifiée d´une réalité autrement plus complexe, il faut certainement préferer une présentation davantage nuancée fondée sur une pluralité graduée de situations en fonction des divers types d´effet que peuvent avoir les normes communautaires.”

In other words,  it is necessary to proceed to a ”deconstruction/construction” of the effects of Community Law paying due attention to the diversification of ways of invocability, the autonomy of the binding effect of Community Law no matter its direct effect in the traditional sense of the term, and the “rereading” of the articulation between Direct Effect and Supremacy. It appears that the evolution of the relationships between Community Law and national law involves a separation between the two key  concepts of Direct Effect and Supremacy, and it leads to ordering the effects of Community Law around the notion of “justiciability”. It is following this above mentioned criterion that we can establish, not a dichotomous distinction, but a progressive gradation between minimal and reinforced justiciability.

Which of the four following routes the Court chooses to take  depends on the nature of the claim before the national court, as well as the nature of the person against whom the claim has been brought.

A)	The “Minimal Justiciability”

Under this heading we gather those different effects which, as a consequence of the Principle of Supremacy, are accorded by Community Law to unimplemented directives even if they do not comply with the requirements of direct effect, including the requirement that it must not be a horizontal relationship. 

The concept of Supremacy had thus for a long time been reduced to a mere “prevalence”, in situations of conflicts of Community Law over national law. But, in reality, the implications of Supremacy are far wider, even though they have just been unveiled very recently, in the series of judgements that has come to be called “second generation judgements”. The prevalence of Community Law can be rendered useless if these consequences are not taken into account.

A.1) The “Invocability of Consistent Interpretation” (the so-called “indirect effect” or “Marleasing doctrine”)

There would not be many differences with the traditional view of this doctrine, except that it should always be expressly based in Supremacy.  The binding effect of Community Law imposed by articles 189 and 5 of the Treaty on Member States reaches the national courts by virtue of the principle of Supremacy. Thus, as is well known, national courts are obliged to interpret national law in the light of the wording and purposes of Community Law.  Marleasing cannot be used to invoke a contra legem interpretation of national law, so cases like Bellone, Centrosteel and Océano Grupo should not be solved via Marleasing.

A.2) The “Invocability of Exclusion”

The theory of the invocability of exclusion that is applied by the French Conseil d’état, it is submitted, should be used by the ECJ in this area. The obligation to ensure the prevalence of Community Law leads to the obligatory non-application of any national norm that is contrary to Community Law. The “invocability of exclusion” derives also from the principle of Supremacy and it exists independently of the Direct Effect of the Community norm in question. This, it is submitted, is the doctrine used in the environmental assessment cases (WWF and Linster), and this, it is also submitted, should be the theoretical construction used to explain most of the cases studied above,  like CIA, Bernáldez, Bellone, Centrosteel and Océano Grupo. 

The Court, though not particularly clearly, has followed this explanation in Unilever :

 “Thus, it follows from the Case-Law of the Court that the inapplicability of a technical regulation which has not been notified in accordance with article 8 of the directive 83/189 can be invoked in proceedings between individuals (…) and there is no reason, in that connection,  to treat disputes between individuals relating to unfair competition, as in the CIA Security case, differently from disputes between individuals concerning contractual rights and obligations, as in the main proceedings. (…) In such circumstances, and unlike the case of non-transposition of directives with which the case-law cited by those governments is concerned [ Faccini Dori], Directive 83/189 does not in any way define the substantive scope of the legal rule on the basis of which the national court must decide the case before it. It creates neither rights nor obligations for individuals.”

And this, no doubt, is the analysis adopted by AG LÉGER in Linster:

“Les consorts Linster ont invité le juge saisi à procéder à un contrôle incident de la légalité d´un règlement grand-ducal. Qu´elle ait été choisie ou imposée par les circonstances ou les caracteristiques du droit national applicabe en la matière, c´est la voie de L´exclusion de la norme nationale qui a donc été retenue.” 

 No conflict exists with the use of this theory and the denial of horizontal effect to directives, as here the Community norm is merely used to avoid the application of national law and not as a regulation for the relationship in question. Thus, the principle of Supremacy is safeguarded without calling the distinction between directives and regulations into question, which would be the result of a solution that is quite frequently invoked in this field, that is, the granting of horizontal direct effect to directives, and, of course, avoiding another radical solution that has been proposed, namely the complete denial of direct effect to directives.

A.3) The “Invocability of Reparation"

The right to reparation, that is, the liability of the Member States for breaches of Community Law, including the non transposition or erroneous transposition of a directive, which is explained above, is also a consequence of the Supremacy of Community Law and also takes place in the absence of direct effect of the norm in question. The relationship between the absence of direct effect and the possibility of a invocability of reparation was shown by the Court in such important judgements as Brassiere du Pêcheur-Factortamte III and Dori.

B)	The “Reinforced Justiciability” (traditionally “direct effect”)

If it is true that all the norms of the Community, whether they produce direct effect or not in the traditional meaning of the term, benefit from a minimal justiciability. Those norms that are recognised as producing “direct effect” enjoy a “reinforced” justiciability that is correlative to their applicability of substitution. By making a difference between the “invocability of exclusion” and the “invocability of Substitution” it is stressed that the conditions of direct effect have to be fulfilled for the second, but not for the first. Accordingly, the line to be drawn in the tricky cases, such as those seen above, depends on whether we are facing a case of invocability of exclusion or a case of invocability of substitution.

C)	Beyond legal formalism: exclusion and substitution as the two sides of the same coin?
“We have discovered that rules alone, mere forms of words, are worthless. We have learned that the concrete instance, the heaping up of concrete instances, the present, vital memory of a multitude of concrete instances, is necessary in order to make any general proposition, be it rule of law or any other, mean anything at all”
K.N. LLEWELLYN

From the point of view of the writer, the proposed theory of the effects of Community Law provides us with a plausible analysis of the case-law on “pseudo-horizontal direct effect of directives”. The difference between invocability of exclusion and invocability of substitution proves useful to explain coherently the motives behind the decisions of the Court in this field. More concretely, it permit us to reconcile the apparent inconsistencies in its rulings, where though formally maintaining the prohibition of horizontal direct effect of directives, the Court accords de facto certain effects to unimplemented directives between individuals. More importantly, we are convinced that this construction of the case-law is based on solid legall arguments: The need for a harmonious balance between the two principles of Supremacy and the division of competences between the Community and the member states. At the end of the day, it is the very sensitive nature of the matter subject to a ruling what leads the Court to split hairs in its legal reasoning.

However, given that distinction between exclusion and substitution is so subtle, it ought not be forgotten that it might prove hard to be grasped and some may even show reluctance to accept it. Indeed, for the reader born in the Common Law tradition the construction proposed in this paper may appear to be too formal or even artificial. To what extent are we not speaking here about the two sides of the same coin? What is the line which can clearly be drawn between these two ideas of exclusion and substitution? 

In our opinion, it is the problematic relationship between the concepts of right and obligation what lie at the very core of the confusion. The reader may think that where the Court states that a directive precludes inconsistent national legislation which imposes an obligation on an individual, it is implicitly deriving from the directive rights in favour of that individual. From this perspective, the logical consequence would be that it is the directive itself that is the norm regulating the horizontal relationship at stake. However, the writter cannot share this conclusion. A deeper analysis of these situations clearly leads us to affirm that the inapplication of national rules contravening a directive (invocability of exclusion) cannot be assimilated to an "a contrario" application of the directive itself (invocability of substitution).

There is no doubt about the fact that in  cases of both exclusion and substitution the legal positions of the parties before the court are affected because of the presence of a directive. But it must be stressed that the effect of the Community norm is not the same in both situations. It is only when the directive substitutes inconsistent national legislation that individuals are granted a right on the very basis of the directive. On the contrary, when the Community norm limits itself to exclude those inconsistent national provisions, individuals are better off not because of the direct application of the directive to the matter, but because of the disappearance of the obligations that the excluded national rules imposed on them. 

In order to illustrate this explanation, let us take a classical case such as Dori. It is  remembered that the Court refused here to extend its case-law on direct effect of directives to horizontal relationships. In the terms proposed in this paper, the Court reaffirmed its unwillingness to grant directives a "reinforced justiciability" as against individuals. In order to assess the validity of the proposed concept of substitution, the question should be whether this case can be properly explained in terms of invocability of exclusion. Coherent with our previous analysis, that possibility must be ruled out. In the absence of national legislation recognising the right contained in the directive, the plaintiff´s  claim amounted to deriving that right against another individual directly from the directive and on the sole basis of it. This is to say, it asked the national court to consider the directive as the norm regulating a contract between individuals. It is obvious that if the Court of Justice had granted this petition, it would have crossed the line and entered the field of substitution. It would have recognised unimplemented directives a capacity which goes further than that of merely excluding inconsistent national legislation. It would have amounted to a recognition of the capacity of this kind of norm to be the substantive basis of a legal relationship between individuals. More graphically, and paraphrasing Judge LENAERTS in his explanation of judicial remedies under Community Law, the directive would have been used by the individual not only as a shield against national provisions contravening it, but also as a sword against another individual.

Dori proves that substitution instances cannot be successfully explained in terms of mere exclusion. Accordingly, it may be concluded that the line separating both concepts is clear from the perspective of the invocability of substitution. In order to complete the circle, however, one question remains to be answered. Is the border line between both concepts equally evident from the perspective of the invocability of exclusion? Unilever, Centrosteel and Océano Grupo must be considered as cases in support of an affirmative answer. The directive plays a more simple role here than in Dori, since it is invoked only to exclude national legislation inconsistent with it. The significant point is that here the "justiciability" of the Community norm is not driven further than that. It starts and concludes  at the level of exclusion. As a consequence, the directive will never be enshrined as the norm regulating the horizontal relationship at stake. The responsibility for this still lies with the national legislator. Accordingly, national provisions will still apply as long as they respect what has been agreed by means of a directive. Following the example set out above, the directive will act here only as a shield: individuals will be able to rely on it only to prevent the application of national legislation which impose on them obligations vis-à-vis other individuals in contravention of Community provisions. Admittedly, this may have a positive effect on the legal position of an individual, but it cannot be regarded to be the same as allowing individuals to exercise rights on the sole basis of the directive. Since it is for the national legislator to grant those rights by means of implementing measures, the directive will not be allowed to be used as a sword against other individuals. In short, in these situations the directive will relieve from obligations, but will not give rise to rights. This being so, it follows that the requirements will not be the same for the directive producing the first or the second effect. The conditions for the traditional "direct" effect will have to be met only in case the directive, in addition to precluding the inconsistent national legislation, regulates as of themselves the juridical relationships at issue.

The explanation of this important difference must be found in the attitude of the Court towards the obligations entered into by the member states at the Community level. In general terms, the Court must rule in such a way as to remain as a neutral adjudicator of the disputes before it, this is to say, it is to strike a balance between the legitimate interests of the Member States and those of the Community. This entails on the one hand that by no means will the Court allow an individual to derive directly from an unimplemented directive a right vis-à-vis other individuals. The court will acknowledge the limited character of the obligations entered into by the member states under the directive and will fully respect the main role of these States in making those rights effective for their citizens by means of implementation (denial of invocability of substitution in horizontal relationships in Dori and El Corte Inglés). 

On the other hand, this will not, however, prevent the Court from assuring the compliance of the Member States with those obligations assumed through the directive. In order to do so, it will grant individuals the possibility to rely on the Community norm vis-à-vis the defaulting Member State (invocability of substitution in vertical relationships) and, what is more important for our purposes, it will grant a limited effect to the directive as between individuals (minimal justiciability). Firstly, the refering courts will be obliged to interpret national rules in accordance with the directive (consistent interpretation). Secondly and more importantly for our explanation, those courts will have to set aside national provisions which are inconsistent with the rights that the State is obliged to grant to individuals in the light of the directive (invocability of exclusion in horizontal relationships in CIA, Bernáldez, Bellone, Océano Grupo...) . In this last case, it is important to stress that the Court will not take the place of the Member State by implementing the directive and consequently this will not become the substantive regulation of the horizontal relationship at issue. More simply, the Court will limit itself to using it as a parameter of legality, easing the path for the future transposition of the Community norm by the Member State.

This difference between exclusion and substitution may be clearly seen by means of a last example such as Ingmar. In this instance, the proposed theory is useful to fully understand the reasoning of the Court and to discard any possible inconsistency with its previous case-law. Ingmar had concluded a contract with an American undertaking under which it was appointed  as commercial agent of the latter in the United Kingdom. A clause of the contract stipulated that the contract was governed by the law of the State of California. When the contract was terminated, Ingmar instituted proceedings on the basis of English law seeking payment of commission and compensation for damage suffered as a result of the termination of the contract.  The English court held against it on the ground that English law did not apply, since the contract was governed by the law of the State of California. On appeal, the court wondered whether Council Directive on self-employed commercial agents could have any bearing on the case and referred the matter for a preliminary ruling to the ECJ. That ruling stated that 

“Articles 17 and 18 of Council Directive 86/653/EEC of 18 December 1986 on the co-ordination of the laws of the Member States relating to self-employed commercial agents, which guarantee certain rights to commercial agents after termination of agency contracts, must be applied where the commercial agent carried on his activity in a Member State although the principal is established in a non-member country and a clause of the contract stipulates that the contract is to be governed by the law of that country”.
 
Setting aside tthe fact hat the judgement was given by a three-judge chamber, the ruling may appear to be a landmark in the case-law of the Court. Is the ECJ finally and expressly granting direct effect to directives in horizontal relationships where it states that the directive applies to the commercial relationship between the principal and its agent? A proper understanding of the difference between exclusion and substitution precludes that possibility.

The relevant directive had been implemented in the United Kingdom within the prescribed period. In fact, the plaintiff based his claim on the transposing British legislation. The main concern was the way this implementation had taken place. Whereas the national provisions at issue allowed the parties to agree that the agency contract was to be governed by the law of a State other than the United Kingdom, article 19 of the directive provided that the parties may not derogate from articles 17 and 18 to the detriment of the commercial agent. Articles 17 and 18 set up the obligation on the member states to ensure that commercial agents are, after termination of the agency contract, indemnified or compensated for damage. In short, the Court had to rule on whether those provisions of the directive applied in favour of the plaintiff irrespective of the will of the parties to the contract. After taking into consideration the purpose of the directive and the referred provisions, the Court ruled that the regime established by the directive was mandatory in nature and that articles 17 and 18 must therefore be observed throughout the Community for their objectives to be attained. Accordingly, it held that those provisions had to be applied in the case before it. 

The conclusion reached by the Court in its ruling seems to be correct in juridical terms. It appears to be clear that, since the concerned provisions were mandatory, the parties may not derogate from the protection afforded by them to the commercial agent. None the less, some problems may arise when the referring court applies this ruling to the case before it. Is it to directly apply the directive in order to grant damages to the claimant? The wording of the ruling seems to afford this possibility, but to do so would amount to substitute the directive for the contravening British legislation. In other words, it would mean to grant direct effect to a directive in a horizontal relationship, in contravention with the ECJ case-law in this field. 

At this point, the proposed differentiation between exclusion and substitution may clarify what  the decision of the referring court should be and why. Contrary to what may seem at first sight, the British court cannot directly apply the directive instead of the transposing national legislation contravening it. In other words, the referring court in this case is not being allowed by the ECJ to consider the provisions of the directive as the substantive law of the relationship. As we have explained above that would amount to granting rights to individuals on the sole basis of the directive and without taking into account the role of the United Kingdom in determining the exact way in which those rights shall be granted to its citizens. In short, a judicial decision like that one would equate a directive with a regulation and consequently would impair the division of competences between the Community and the member states. 

However, if the British court would rule on the sole basis of its national legislation, it is clear that the Supremacy of  Community Law would be called into question. Then, how is the conflict to be solved? In order to assure the effectiveness of the community provisions while respecting the character of the directive as such, the referring court should simply exclude the national provisions contravening them (as it is obvious that a construction of such provisions in conformity with the directive would lead to a contra legem interpretation). More concretely, the national provisions according to which the parties to the agency contract may agree for it to be governed by the law of a non-member State should be disapplied. The contract would be ruled by the British transposing measures and as a consequence the national court could comply with the directive by granting damages on the basis of national legislation. 

This case shows clearly that exclusion and substitution cannot be seen as the two sides of the same coin. When excluding national norms contravening a directive, the Community norm is not substantively regulating the horizontal relationship at issue. At the most, it relieves an individual from obligations imposed on him by national provisions contrary to the directive (in the case above, the obligation to abide by the law of a non-member State where it has been chosen by the parties to rule an agency contract). Admittedly, this may cause the directive to have a negative impact on the legal position of an individual, but such adverse effect does not correspond to a right directly derived from the directive by another individual (in Ingmar, the exclusion of the national provisions allowing choice-of-law clauses in an agency contract prejudiced the principal of such a contract, but if the national court was finally to award damages to the agent, it did so not on the basis of the directive itself, but on the basis of its British transposition). 

5.- Conclusions. The Rule of Law, Legal Certainty and Future developments in the Case-Law
 
The rulings of the Court in recent cases such as Bellone, Océano Grupo or Unilever cannot be reconciled with the traditional case-law on horizontal direct effect of directives. The Court still keeps Dori as good law by formally denying any effect to directives between individuals while at the same time it de facto grants some effects to unimplemented directives in horizontal relationships. 

Leaving apart whether the Court's decisions are right or wrong, what proves essential at this point is to find out what are the reasons behind them and, more importantly, where and why will the Court draw the line when facing future similar cases. From a thorough analysis of this case-law, it is submitted that the Court will try to arrive at some kind of balance between these principles:

1)	The always enduring interest of the ECJ in assuring respect for the bargains reached between member states => “No free riders.”

PAFITIS 	    CIA   	   UNILEVER
BERNÁLDEZ 	 BELLONE 	CENTROSTEEL

Broad concept of Supremacy

Minimal justiciability

Invocability of exclusion

2)	Adjudicating on the division of competences between the Community and the member states (a “hot” issue after the SEA)

DORI, EL CORTE INGLÉS
(KECK, TOBACCO CASE)

Subsidiarity

Reinforced justiciability

Invocability of substitution

The Court’s willingness to emphasise the line that divides the competence of the Community and that of the member states through the formal denial of horizontal direct effect to unimplemented directives reaches its limit when the Supremacy of Community law can be called into question. The old role of the Court of making the bargains achieved by the member states stick is still to some extent alive as its death would undermine the foundations of the Community legal system. The Court will adjudicate on the division of competences (it has for the first time stricken down a Community measure on the grounds of lack of competence of the Community in the Tobacco case), but it will not knock down the very basis of the Constitutional architecture of the Community.

From this point of view, the understanding of the recent decisions of the Court in this field turns difficult because of the Court's stubbornness in trying to justify cases via a legal reasoning which was built up in accordance with a different vision of the juridical problem at stake. Consequently, cases such as CIA, Bernáldez, Bellone and Océano Grupo show clearly that a new theory of the effects of Community Law in the national juridical orders is needed, as the old summa divisio of norms with and without direct effect no longer explains coherently the developments of the law. This new theory takes as its basis the principle of Supremacy which,  conceived in adequate terms, embraces much more than a mere rule of prevalence so that its implications provide for an authentic gradation of possibilities of invoking of Community norms before national courts.  A minimal justiciability can be distinguished from the classic concept of Direct Effect, and it is said to exist for all Community norms, independently of their possible Direct Effect. The doctrine of the invocability of exclusion is  part of this minimal justiciability, and thus can be used in cases where traditional direct effect is impossible, notably in horizontal relationships. The environmental assessment cases show that the theory will not in any case be new as it is already being used by the Court in vertical relationships. Unilever can be seen as a timid acceptance by the court of the views of this paper. The opinions of AG SAGGIO in Océano Grupo and mainly of AG LÉGER in Linster are an open acceptance of those views.

The ECJ enhanced the respect for the Rule of Law by recognising direct effect in the Community legal order when no express provision was made for it in the Treaty. The ECJ enhanced the respect of the Rule of law by refusing to recognise horizontal direct effect to directives, thus refusing to give a fatal blow to the distinction between directives and regulations, and thus accepting its role as adjudicator in the division of competences between the Community and the Member States. The Court has also enhanced the respect of the Rule of Law by (in a quite sophisticated way) distinguishing the cases in which the above mentioned division of competences is at stake from those in which Supremacy is at the centre of the problem, and by correctly stressing the fact that the emphasis in sharpening the boundary line between competences will not be achieved by hindering the principle of Supremacy. But the Rule of Law also implies legal certainty, and, it is respectfully submitted, that is not exactly the dominant characteristic of this area of law, with some cases that at first sight look incoherent with each other, and for which no clear explanation is given. If the Court does not make explicit the reasons and principles underlying its decisions, a juridical difference as subtle and complex as the one at issue  may be easily overlooked by the doctrine and even by the national courts.

Of course, it is a well known and a much spoken about fact that the Court is a collegiate body and, due to its search for consensus and the absence of individual opinions (such as can be found in some other high Tribunals, for example in the Constitutional Court of Spain) its judgements are terse and laconic, specially when compared with the opinions of the AGs

Though one can understand and explain the lack of clarity in the case-law, this does not change the fact that clarity is better than obscurity in Law, and it is to be hoped that the Court will clearly state the principles that it is actually using in practice. It is respectfully submitted this must happen sooner or later.

PABLO VENTURA FIGUEROA REGUEIRO
BRUGGE, APRIL 2001 a.d.
MADRID, APRIL 2002 a.d.
vedrus@hotmail.com

6. Bibliography.

6.1. Case-Law from the European Court of Justice
(reference is made to the opinions delivered by the AGs when they have been found to be relevant for the subject of the paper)

-Case C-26/62 Van Gend en Loos [1963] ECR 1.

-Case C-9/70 Grad v. Finanzamt Traustein [1970] ECR 825.

-Case C-33/70 SACE [1970] ECR 1213.

-Case C-2/74 Reyners v. Belgium [1974] ECR 631.

-Case C-41/74 Van Duyn v. Home Office [1974] ECR 1337.

-Case C-36/75 Rutili v. Minister for the Interior [1975] ECR 1219.

-Case C-43/75 Defrenne v. Société Anonyme Belge de Navigation Aerienne [1976] ECR 455.

-Case C-51/76 Verbond van Nederlandse Ondernemingen v. Inspecteur der Invoerrechten en Accijzen [1977] ECR 113.

-Case C-38/77 Enka v. Inspecteur der Invoerrechten en Accijnzen [1977] ECR 2203.

-Case C-148/78 Pubblico Ministerio v. Tulio Ratti [1979] ECR 1629.

- Case C-112/80 Dürbeck v. Haupzolllamt Frankfurt/Main Flughafen [1981] ECR 1095.

-Case 158/80 Butterfahrten [1981] ECR 1805.

-Case C-8/81 Becker v Finanzamt Münster-Innenstadt [1982] ECR 53.

-Case C-14/83, Von Colson and Kamann v. Land Nordrhein-Westfalen [1984] ECR 1891.

-Case 152/84 Marshall v Southampton and South-WestHampshire Area Health Authority  [1986] ECR 723.

-Case C-222/84 Johnston v Chief Constable of the RUC [1986] ECR 1651.

-Case C-80/86, Criminal Proceedings against Kolpinghuis Nijmegen [1987] ECR 3969.

-Case C-380/87 Enichem Base and Others v Comune di Cinisello Balsamo [1989] ECR 2491.

-Case C-103/88 Fratelli Constanzo v Commune di Milano [1989] ECR 1839.

-Case C-69/89 Nakajima v Council [1991] ECR I-2069.

-Case C-106/89, Marleasing SA v. La Comercial Internacional de Alimentación S.A. [1990] ECR I-4135.

-Case 188/89 Foster v. British Gas [1990] ECR I-3313.

-Joined Cases C-6 and C-9/90 Francovich and others [1991] ECR I-5357.

-Joined Cases C-267 and C-268/ 91, Criminal Proceedings against Keck and Mithouard, [1993] ECR I-6907.

-Case C-271/91 Marshall II [1993] ECR I-4388.

	* Opinion by AG VAN GERVEN delivered on 16 january 1993.

-Case C-91/92 Faccini Dori v Recreb Srl. [1994] ECR 3325.
	
* Opinion by AG LENZ delivered on 9 february 1994.

-Case C-334/92 Wagner Miret [1993] ECR I-6911, para. 22 at I-6932.

-Case C-431/92 Commission v. Germany [1995] ECR I-2189.

-Joined Cases C-46/93 and C-48/93 Brasserie du Pêcheur and Factortame III [1996] ECR I-1029.

-Case C-312/93 Peterbroeck vs Belgian State[1995]ECR I-4599.

-Joined Cases C-430 and C-431/93 Van Schijndel and Van Veen v. SPF [1995] ECR I-4705.

-Case C-441/93 Panagis Pafitis and Others v Trapeza Kentrikis Ellados AE and Others [1996] ECR I-1347.

-Case C-129/94 Criminal Proceedings against Rafael Ruiz Bernáldez. [1996]ECR   I-1847.

-Joined Cases C-178/94, C-179/94, C-188/94, C-189/94 & C-190/94 Dillenkofer and Others [1996] ECR I-4845.

-Case C-192/94 El Corte Inglés v. Cristina Blázquez Rivero [1996] ECR I-1281.

-Case C-194/94 CIA Security International SA v Signalson [1996] ECR I-2230.

* Opinion by AG ELMER delivered on 24 october 1995.

-Case C-72-95 Kraaijeveld and Others [196] E.C.R. I-5403.

-Case C-168/95 Criminal Proceedings Against Luciano Arcaro [1996] ECR I-4705.

-Case C-180/95 Nils Draehmpaehl v Urania Immobilienservice ohG [1997] ECR I-2195.

-Case 97/96 Daihatsu Deutschland [1997] ECR I-6843.

-Case C-129/96 Inter Environment Wallonie ASBL v Région Wallonne, [1997] ECR I-7411.

-Case 162/96 Racke v. Hauptzollamt Mainz [1998], ECR I-3655.

-Joined Cases C-253/96 to C-258/96 Kampelmann and Others [1997] ECR I-6907.

-Case C-319/96 Brinkman [1998] ECR I-5255.

-Case C-111/97 Evobus Austria [1998] ECR I-5411, paras 14-21 at I-5436-5438.

-Case C-215/97 Bellone v Yokohama SpA [1998] ECR I-2191.

-Case C-226/97 Criminal Proceedings against Lemmens [1998] ECR I-3711.
	
* Opinion Delivered by AG FENNELLY on 12 february 1998.

-Case C-435/97 World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Others and Autonome Provinz Bozen and Others, (unreported) judgement of 16 september 1999.
	
	* Opinion delivered by AG MISCHO on 29 April 1999.

- Joined Cases C-240/98 to C-244/98 Océano Grupo Editorial v. Salvat Editores, judgement  (unreported) of 27 June 2000.
	
* Opinion delivered by AG SAGGIO on  16  december 1999.

- Case C-287/98 State of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg v the Linsters (unreported) judgement of 19 september 2000.

	* Opinion delivered by AG LÉGER on 11 january 2000.

-Case C-376/98 Federal Republic of Germany v. European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, (unreported) judgement of 5 october 2000.

-Case C-443/98 Unilever Italia vs. Central Food (unreported) judgement of the 26 september 2000.
	
* Opinion delivered by AG FENNELLY on 27 january 2000.

-Case C-456/98 Centrosteel v Adipol GmbH (unreported) judgement of 13 July 2000.

* Opinion delivered by AG JACOBS on 16 march 2000.

-Case C-381/98 Ingmar GB Ltd v. Eaton Leonard Technologies Inc., (not yet reported) judgement of 9 November 2000.

-Case C-28/99 Criminal proceedings against Jean Verdonck, Ronald Everaert and Édith de Baedts, (not yet reported) judgement of 3 May 2001.

-Case C-37/99 Criminal Proceedings against Roelof Donkersteeg (unreported) judgement of 16 November 2000. 

* Opinion delivered by AG FENNELLY on 6 April 2000.

-Case C-481/99 Georg Heininger and Helga Heininger v Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank AG, judgement (not yet reported) of 13 December 2001.

* Opinion delivered by AG LÉGER on 12 July 2001.

-Case C-159/00 Sapod Audic v. Eco-Emballages SA, judgement not delivered at the time of writing these lines.

* Opinion delivered by AG JACOBS on 17 January 2002.

-Case  C-291/00 S.A. Société LTJ Diffusion v. SA SADAS, judgement not delivered at the time of writing these lines.

* Opinion delivered by  AG JACOBS on 17 January 2002.

-Case C-386/00 Axa Royale Belge SA v Stratégie Finance SPRL, judgement (not yet reported) of 5 March 2002.

* Opinion delivered by AG JACOBS on 15 November 2001.

-Case C-99/01 Gottfried Linhart v. Unabhängiger Verwaltungssenat Wien and Dr. Hans Biffl, jugdement not delivered at the time of writing these lines.

* Opinion delivered by AG HEELGOED on 7 March 2002.

6.2. Cases from the National Jurisdictions

- Minister of Interior v Cohn-Bendit , Conseil d´État , judgement of the 22 dec 1978 [1980] 1 CMLR 543 (France)

- Re VAT Directives [1982] 1 CMLR 527 (Germany)

- Nicolo [1990] 1 CMLR 213. (France)

- Compagnie Alitalia [1990] 1 CMLR 248 (France)

- Rassemblement des Opposants à la Chasse [1990] 2 CMLR 831. (France)

- Foster (1991) House of Lords 2 AC 306 (UK)

- Boisdet [1991] 1 CMLR 3. (France)

-Doughty v Rolls-Royce plc, [1992] I CMLR 1045 (UK)

- SA Rothmans International France [1993] 1 CMLR 253. (France)

-NUT and Others v St Mary´s Church of England Junior School [1997] 3 CMLR 630 (UK)

6.3. Legislative acts of the Communities

-Council Directive 76/464 EEC on pollution caused by certain dangerous substances discharged into the aquatic environment of the Community [1976]O.J. L179/23. 

-Council Directive 76/768/CEE of  27 July, 1976 on cosmetic products [1976] OJ L262.

-Council Directive  77/91/EEC of 13 December, 1976 on co-ordination of safeguards which, for the protection of the interests of members and others, are required by article 58 of the Treaty in respect of the formation of public limited liability companies and the maintenance and alteration of their capital, with a view to making such safeguards equivalent [1976] OJ L26/1.

-Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, approved on behalf of the Community by Council Decision 80/271/EEC of 10 December 1979 concerning the conclusion of the Multilateral Agreements resulting from the 1973 to 1979 trade negotiations [1980] OJ  L 71/1.

-Council Directive 83/189/EEC of 28 March 1983 laying down a procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations [1983] OJ L109/8.

-Council Directive 83/513/EEC of 26 September 1983 on limit values and quality objectives for cadmium discharges [1983] L291/1.

-Council Directive 85/337/EEC of 27 June 1985 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment [1985] OJ L 175/40.

-Council Directive 85/577/EEC of 20 December 1985 to protect the consumer in respect of contracts negotiated away from business premises [1985] OJ 1985 L 372.

-Council Directive 86/653/EEC of 18 December 1986 on the co-ordination of the laws of the Member States relating to self-employed commercial agents, [1986] OJ L382/17.

-Council Regulation (EEC) No 2423/88 of 11 July 1988 on protection against dumped or subsidised imports from countries not members of the European Economic Community [1988] OJ L 209/1.

-Council Directive 92/96/EEC of 10 November 1992 on the co-ordination of laws, regulations and administrative provisions relating to direct life assurance, OJ 1992 L 360.

-Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5  April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts,  OJ L95/29.

6.4. Scientific Literature

This Bibliography does not intend to be exhaustive in a field like this one, where books could drown the most gallant reader. This writer will only quote the sources that have been used for writing these pages, which (well, at least that was what he tried) were the most recent ones. Extensive reference to older sources can be found in CRAIG and DE BÚRCA, SIMON, HARTLEY or STEINER´s classic works on EC Law.

-A.M.ARNULL, A.A.DASHWOOD, M.G.ROSS & D.A.WYATT, Wyatt & Dashwood´s European Union Law, Sweet & Maxwell, London, 2000, p. 89-104.

-F.BERROD “Directive concernant la procédure d´information dans le domaine des normes et réglementations techniques”, [1998] Europe, commentaire 274.

-P. CRAIG, “Directives, Direct Effect, Indirect Effect and the Construction of national legislation” [1997] ELRev 22 519

-P.CRAIG, G. DE BÚRCA, EU Law. Text, Cases and Materials, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998.

-P. CRAIG, G DE BÚRCA (eds), The Evolution of EU Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998.

-E. DEARDS, “Indirect Effect after Webb v Emo Air Cargo (UK) Ltd: How Must National Law be Interpreted to Comply with a directive?”,[1996] EPL, V2 I1.

-D. EDWARD, "Direct effect, the separation of powers and the judicial enforcement of obligations", in Scritti in Onore di Giuseppe Federico Mancini, volume II, Diritto dell'Unione europea, Dott. A. Giuffrè Ed., Milan, 1998, at pp. 438-439.

-F. EMMERT, M PEREIRA DE AZEVEDO, “L´ effet horizontal des directive. La jurisprudence de la CJCE: Un bateau Ivre?”,  [1993] RTDE eur 29 (3)  503-524.

-J.M. FERNÁNDEZ MARTÍN, “El principio de tutela Judicial Efectiva de los derechos subjetivos derivados del derecho comunitario. Evolución y alcance”. [1994] RIE, V21 N 3 p. 893-894 

-M. GALLEGO PÉREZ, “Crónica de la Jurisprudencia del Tribunal de Justicia de las Comunidades Europeas. Comentario a la sentencia del Tribunal de Justicia de 3 de marzo de 1994, Nicole Vaneetveld, dictada en el asunto C-316/93”, [1994] CED N 11 p. 135-141.

-H. GILLIAMS, "Horizontale werking van richtlijnen: dogma’s en realiteit", in Liber Amicorum Walter van Gerven, Deurne, 2000, p. 223 et seq.

-L.GONZÁLEZ VAQUÉ, “Inaplicabilidad por los jueces nacionales de las reglamentaciones técnicas no notificadas a la Comisión Europea: la sentencia Lemmens del TJCE” [1999] GJ 201, p. 45-50.

-T.C.HARTLEY, The Foundations of European Community Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, p. 191-232.

-O.W. HOLMES, "The Common Law", Dover Publications, New York, 1991 (1881).

-O.W. HOLMES, "The Path of the Law", 10 HLRev (1897), pp. 457-478.

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