The following is a list of notable judgments of the European Court of Justice.

Principles of Union Law

Direct effect

Treaties, Regulations and Decisions

"The [European Economic] Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which the [Member] States have limited their sovereign rights". "The Court ... has the jurisdiction to answer ... questions referred that ... relate to the interpretation of the treaty." States can provide in national legislation for appropriate sanctions which are not provided for in the regulation, and can continue to regulate various related issues which are not covered in the regulation

Directives

Member States are precluded by their failure to implement a directive properly from refusing to recognise its binding effect in cases where it is pleaded against them, thus they cannot rely on their failure to implement the directive in time. There is no obligation of harmonious interpretation where the national measure, interpreted in the light of the directive, would impose criminal liability. Notwithstanding the Kolpinghuis ruling, the creation of any other kind of legal disadvantage of detriment, save for criminal liability, is very well possible.

Primacy

Community law takes precedence over the Member States' own domestic law. Duty to set aside provisions of national law which are incompatible with Community law. The Court ruled that:"A national court which is called upon, within the limits of its jurisdiction, to apply provisions of Community law is under a duty to give full effect to those provisions, if necessary refusing of its own motion to apply any conflicting provision of national legislation, even if adopted subsequently, and it is not necessary for the court to request or await the prior setting aside of such provisions by legislative or other constitutional means." National law must be interpreted and applied, insofar as possible, so as to avoid a conflict with a Community rule. Duty on national courts to secure the full effectiveness of Community law, even where it is necessary to create a national remedy where none had previously existed.

Enforcement of EU law

EU law has not established its own system for its enforcement or for aggrieved parties to seek remedies for breach of EU law. In the absence of such a system,"It is clear from the case-law that ... it is for the domestic legal system of each Member State to designate the courts and tribunals having jurisdiction and to lay down the detailed procedural rules governing actions for safeguarding rights which individuals derive from Community law, provided, first, that such rules are not less favourable than those governing similar domestic actions (principle of equivalence) and, secondly, that they do not render virtually impossible or excessively difficult the exercise of rights conferred by Community law (principle of effectiveness) (Joined Cases C-430/93 and C-431/93 Van Schijndel and van Veen [1995] ECR I-4705, paragraph 17, and Case C-129/00 Commission v Italy [2003] ECR I-14637, paragraph 25)."

Rejection of the reciprocity principles of general international law

"[I]n [the defendants'] view, … international law allows a party, injured by the failure of another party to perform its obligations, to withhold performance of its own … However, this relationship between the obligations of parties cannot be recognized under Community law ... The treaty is not limited to creating reciprocal obligations ... but establishes a new legal order ... [T]he basic concept of the treaty requires that the Member States not take the law into their own hands."

Fundamental rights

"Fundamental rights [are] enshrined in the general principles of Community law and protected by the Court." Fundamental rights are an integral part of the general principles of law the observance of which the Court ensures. When protecting fundamental rights, "the Court is bound to draw inspiration from constitutional traditions common to the Member States, and it cannot therefore uphold measures which are incompatible with fundamental rights recognised and protected by the Constitutions of those States." The Court can also draw on international human rights treaties to which Member States have collaborated or are signatories. Fundamental rights affect the scope and application of Community law. In Carpenter, the Court weaved principles of respect for family and private life from Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights into its analysis of the rights of Union citizens. It concluded that the right of a minor child to reside in a Member State under Community law brought with it a corollary right for his mother to reside there as well. The legislative organs of the union cannot make laws which allow private sector organisations to discriminate on the grounds of gender even if such discrimination is based on relevant and accurate actuarial and statistical data.

Law of the institutions

Acts

Acts of the European institutions must be supported by sufficient reasoning, the validity of which shall be examined by the Court.

Legislative process

The European Community does not have the power under the treaties to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Liability

The Plaumann test sets out the criteria for non-privileged applicants to prove individual concern: 'Applicants must show that the decision affects them by reason of certain attributes which are peculiar to them or by reason of circumstances in which they are differentiated from all other persons and by virtue of these factors distinguishes them individually just as in the case of the person addressed.' In this case the court took a more liberal approach than the restrictive Plaumann test for establishing individual concern, which was, however, not followed in judgements thereafter.

Interim orders

Article 186 of the Treaty of Rome stated that the Court "may, in any cases referred to it, make any necessary interim order". Article 39 of the Treaty of Nice's Protocol on the Statute of the Court of Justice (2001) states that "the President of the Court may, by way of summary procedure ... prescribe interim measures in pursuance of Article 243 of the EC Treaty or Article 158 of the EAEC Treaty". In Commission of the European Communities v Kingdom of Belgium (1994), the president dismissed an application for interim measures submitted by the commission on 11 March 1994 because the commission had "not displayed the diligence to be expected". The commission had been aware of an alleged breach of the procurement directives in October 1993, and had referred on 8 February 1994 to its "intention" to seek the suspension of a public supplies contract, but did not apply for an interim order until 11 March 1994.

Competition

Leading cases on competition law include Consten & Grundig v Commission and United Brands v Commission.

Consumer protection

Three cases which impact on the national courts' approach to considering fairness in consumer contracts are:

Contractual obligations

Data protection

Employment

External relations

External trade

Intellectual property rights

Internal market

Free movement of goods

Definition of "goods"

'Goods' are "products which can be valued in money and which are capable, as such, of forming the subject of commercial transactions". "Waste, whether recyclable or not, is to be regarded as 'goods'."

Customs duties and equivalent charges

Articles 23 and 25 EC prohibit as between Member States all "customs duties on imports and exports and of all charges having equivalent effect". The prohibition in Article 25 also applies to customs duties of a fiscal nature. Customs charges are prohibited because "any pecuniary charge, however small, imposed on goods by reason of the fact that they cross a frontier constitutes an obstacle to the movement of such goods." A charge having equivalent effect to a customs duty is "any pecuniary charge however small and whatever its designation and mode of application which is imposed unilaterally on domestic or foreign goods by reason of the fact that they cross a frontier and which is not a customs duty in the strict sense." This is the case "even if it is not imposed for the benefit of the State [and] is not discriminatory or protective in effect, or if the product on which the charge is imposed is not in competition with any domestic product." Charges imposed for a public health inspection carried out on the entry of goods to a Member State can be a charge having equivalent effect to a customs duty. It was not important that the charges were proportionate to the costs of the inspection, nor that such inspections were in the public interest. A charge for a service will not be regarded as a customs duty where it: (a) does not exceed the cost of the service, (b) that service is obligatory and applied uniformly for all the goods concerned, (c) the service fulfills obligations prescribed by Community law, and (d) the service promotes the free movement of goods in particular by neutralising obstacles which may arise from unilateral measures of inspection.

Indirect taxation

Article 110 EC prevents any Member State from imposing, "directly or indirectly, on the products of other Member States any internal taxation of any kind in excess of that imposed directly or indirectly on similar domestic products". This prohibition also extends to "internal taxation of such a nature as to afford indirect protection to other products".

Quantitative restrictions

Article 34 EC bans "quantitative restrictions on imports and all measures having equivalent effect shall be prohibited between Member States", the same provision in respect of exports is found in Article 35 EC. Quantitative restrictions are "measures which amount to a total or partial restraint of, according to the circumstances, imports, exports or goods in transit."

Measures having Equivalent effect to a Quantitative Restriction (MEQRs)

The following are prohibited as Measures having Equivalent effect to a Quantitative Restriction (MEQRs): "all trading rules enacted by Member States which are capable of hindering, directly or indirectly, actually or potentially, intra-Community trade."

Justification

Article 36 EC exempts quantitative restrictions which are justified on grounds of "public morality, public policy or public security; the protection of health and life of humans, animals or plants; the protection of national treasures possessing artistic, historic or archaeological value; or the protection of industrial and commercial property". The restrictions must not, in any case, "constitute a means of arbitrary discrimination or a disguised restriction on trade between Member States".

Commission v Austria cases

Cases C-320/03 and C-28/09 found that rules prohibiting use of part of the A12 Autobahn by lorries of over 7.5 tonnes carrying certain goods were an unjustified restriction of the free movement of goods, even though the relevant Austrian laws were a response to the EU directives on air quality.

Product liability

The Product Liability Directive aims to ensure undistorted competition between economic operators, to facilitate the free movement of goods and to avoid differences in levels of consumer protection.

Free movement of persons

Workers

Citizenship

Freedom of establishment and to provide services

Establishment

Services

Non-application of single market principles

Investment

Jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments

Police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters

Procurement

Procurement procedures of entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors

Public procurement

Social policy

State liability

Taxation

Value added tax

VAT groups

Taxation barrister Philip Simpson refers to "the three main ECJ cases" on VAT groups as: A separate ruling is Case C-355/06, van der Steen (2007), a case which Simpson refers to as "not terribly clear".

Fifty-seven pre-accession cases

The following is the official list of fifty-seven cases that were translated in preparation for new member states who joined the European Union in 2004. The list below contains fifty case names, because some cases were joined.