Internationale Handelsgesellschaft mbH v Einfuhr- und Vorratsstelle für Getreide und Futtermittel
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''Internationale Handelsgesellschaft mbH v Einfuhr- und Vorratsstelle für Getreide und Futtermittel'' (1970) Case 11/70 is an
EU law European Union law is a system of rules operating within the member states of the European Union (EU). Since the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community following World War II, the EU has developed the aim to "promote peace, its val ...
case and
German constitutional law The law of Germany (german: das Recht Deutschlands), that being the modern German legal system (german: Deutsches Rechtssystem), is a system of civil law which is founded on the principles laid out by the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of G ...
case concerning the conflict of law between a national legal system and the laws of the European Union.


Facts

The
Common Agricultural Policy The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the agricultural policy of the European Union. It implements a system of agricultural subsidies and other programmes. It was introduced in 1962 and has since then undergone several changes to reduce the ...
permitted exports only by exporters who obtained an export licence, on a deposit of money, that could be forfeited if they failed to make the export during the licence’s validity period. The Internationale Handelsgesellschaft mbH claimed that the licensing system was a disproportionate violation of their right to conduct a business under the German constitution (''
Grundgesetz The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (german: Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland) is the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. The West German Constitution was approved in Bonn on 8 May 1949 and came in ...
''), because it did more than was necessary to achieve the public objective at hand. The German Administrative Court (''Verwaltungsgericht'') made a reference to the ECJ.


Judgment


European Court of Justice

The
ECJ The European Court of Justice (ECJ, french: Cour de Justice européenne), formally just the Court of Justice, is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law. As a part of the Court of Justice of the European Un ...
held that the validity of EU measures cannot be challenged on grounds of national law rules or concepts, even if that is a violation of fundamental human rights provisions in a member state’s constitution. European Community law did, however, respect fundamental rights, as in member state systems. But here there was no fundamental right violation. The case then returned to the German Administrative Court (''Verwaltungsgericht''). Given the conflict it potentially faced, it then requested a ruling from the German Constitutional Court.


German Constitutional Court

The German Constitutional Court (''
Bundesverfassungsgericht The Federal Constitutional Court (german: link=no, Bundesverfassungsgericht ; abbreviated: ) is the supreme constitutional court for the Federal Republic of Germany, established by the constitution or Basic Law () of Germany. Since its inc ...
'') held that so long as fundamental rights protection was evident, it would not scrutinise EU action in detail.


Significance

The case is important because it addresses what appears to be one of the most difficult challenges facing the acceptance of the supremacy of European law within the German legal order, that is, the possibility of conflict between a European law obligation and a fundamental right protected by the German Constitution. As Weiler has argued, it was virtually impossible that the national courts would accept European law supremacy without a guarantee of human rights protection. In this light, the significance of ''Internationale Handelsgesellschaft'' was that the European Court of Justice itself took on a role protecting the fundamental rights of individuals in the European legal order, allowing the German Constitutional Court to adopt an accommodating approach to the continuing development of the supremacy of European law within the German legal order. This approach to the case may perhaps overemphasise the sensitivity and difficulty of the problem however. The judgments of the German Constitutional Court on possible conflicts between treaty obligations and German constitutional rights throughout the postwar era demonstrate that the Court has been extremely cautious about finding that Germany’s treaty obligations violate the fundamental rights protected by the German Constitution, and indeed that the German Constitutional Court has consistently tended to accommodate the constitutionality of such treaty obligations since the 1950s. Subsequently, in '' Re Wünsche Handelsgesellschaft'' in a case where an EC import licensing system was challenged in the German Court, but held valid by the ECJ, the BVerfGE revised its approach. It held that because, since 1974, the ECJ had developed protection for fundamental rights, declarations on rights and democracy had been made by the Community institutions, and all EC Member States had acceded to the
European Convention on Human Rights The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR; formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by ...
, it would no longer scrutinise EU law in every case. It said, This is popularly known as the '' Solange II'' judgment.See J Frowein, ‘Solange II’ (1988) 25 CMLR 201


See also

* European Union law *'' Stauder v City of Ulm'', a landmark case (1969) concerning the protection of human rights in the European Union


Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Internationale Handelsgesellschaft mbH v Einfuhr- und Vorratsstelle fur Getreide und Futtermittel European Union company case law Federal Constitutional Court cases 1970 in case law 1970 in West Germany