Costa v ENEL
EU law takes precedence over the national law of the Member States, including national law passed later, because the Member States have limited their sovereign rights.
Facts
Mr Costa, an Italian lawyer, owned shares in an electricity company that was nationalised by an Italian law of 1962, which transferred the electricity industry to a new state body, ENEL. He refused to pay an electricity bill of about 1,900 lire, arguing that the nationalisation law breached provisions of the EEC Treaty. The Italian Constitutional Court had held that the later Italian law prevailed over the Treaty, which had been incorporated by an earlier Italian statute. A magistrate in Milan referred questions to the Court of Justice.
Legal principle
The Court of Justice held that EU law takes precedence over national law. It said that, by contrast with ordinary international treaties, the EEC Treaty has created its own legal system which became an integral part of the legal systems of the Member States, and which their courts are bound to apply. By creating a Community of unlimited duration, the Member States have limited their sovereign rights and have thus created a body of law which binds both their nationals and themselves. The law stemming from the Treaty could not be overridden by domestic legal provisions, however framed, without the legal basis of the Community itself being called into question.
Related cases on Supremacy and the EU legal order
- Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato v Simmenthal SpA Case 106/77, [1978] ECR 629
- Brunner v European Union Treaty [1994] 1 CMLR 57
- Commission v Luxembourg and Belgium (Dairy products) Joined Cases 90/63 and 91/63, [1964] ECR 625
- Commission v Poland (Independence of the Supreme Court) Case C-619/18, EU:C:2019:531
- Internationale Handelsgesellschaft mbH v Einfuhr und Vorratsstelle für Getreide und Futtermittel Case 11/70, [1970] ECR 1125
- Melloni v Ministerio Fiscal Case C-399/11, EU:C:2013:107
- R (HS2 Action Alliance Ltd) v Secretary of State for Transport [2014] UKSC 3, [2014] 1 WLR 324
- R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5, [2018] AC 61
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