Introduction

Granting the possibility for individuals to assert EC legal provisions in national courts in Van Gend en Loos transformed the EC legal settlement. The Court of Justice became the guardian of a sovereign legal order, which created new legal subjects and new principles, and was enforceable in domestic courts. The subjects of EC law were also provided with new litigation opportunities. At the apex of all this was the domestic court, for Van Gend en Loos was, above all, a judgment about the responsibilities of national courts. These were responsible for the application of EC law and were required by that judgment to provide standing to any individual that asserted directly effective EC rights before them and to disapply any national measures that conflicted with these. Without their cooperation, the whole edifice collapses. This begged the question of why national courts should comply with these pronouncements. We have seen in earlier chapters how they came to accept the authority of EC law. Yet, even if national courts were to be obedient subjects of EC law, further problems arise. There is the danger of their making errors, of courts in different jurisdictions interpreting EC law in different ways, and of illegal EC instruments being allowed to remain in force. More proactively, there was the question of how to develop relations between national courts and the Court of Justice so as to allow the latter to carry out its duties of setting out the content of the EC legal order and of guarding its autonomy.